yml643 B

GitLab CI Rules and Workflow Conditions

Rule-driven GitLab CI: a workflow block with four ordered conditions ending in `when: never`, plus job rules combining changes patterns, regex tag matching, a null-branch comparison, and a manual allow-failure fallback.

Config testing Config parsing Editor testing

Preview — first 33 linesyml

stages:
  - build
  - deploy

workflow:
  rules:
    - if: $CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event"
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == $CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_TAG =~ /^v\d+\.\d+\.\d+$/
    - when: never

build:
  stage: build
  script:
    - make build
  rules:
    - changes:
        - src/**/*
        - package-lock.json
      when: on_success
    - when: manual
      allow_failure: true

deploy:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - echo "release $CI_COMMIT_TAG"
  rules:
    - if: '$CI_COMMIT_TAG =~ /^v\d+\.\d+\.\d+$/ && $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == null'
      when: on_success
    - if: $DEPLOY_ENABLED != "true"
      when: never

Specifications

System: GitLab CI
Workflow Rules: 4
Job Rules: 4
Regex Rules: 2
Changes Patterns: 2

Testing contract

Expected to pass

Scenario: Evaluate ordered GitLab CI rule lists, including regex conditions and a terminal when: never
Expected result: Rules evaluate first-match-wins, and a pipeline whose source matches none of the first three workflow rules is never created

What is a .yml file?

YML is an alternate file extension for YAML, a human-readable data-serialization format based on indentation, key-value mappings, and lists. The content and parsing rules are identical to .yaml; only the extension differs. It is widely used for CI and application configuration files.

How to use this file

Use an example YML file to test that config loaders treat .yml and .yaml identically, and to exercise indentation, comment, and multi-document parsing.

How to use this file for testing

“GitLab CI Rules and Workflow Conditions” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for Config testing, Config parsing, Editor testing. TOML, INI, YAML, .env, and dotfile configuration samples with nested sections and typed values — for testing config parsers, loaders, and environment tooling.

Documented properties for this file: YML · 643 bytes. Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.

Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.

Pipeline and infrastructure fixtures are inert configuration: steps reference fictional images and scripts, and nothing here executes. Run your linter, schema validator, migrator, or policy engine against them, and expect the deprecated-syntax and intentionally invalid variants to be rejected.

Point your config loader at the file and assert it reads the documented sections and typed values, including any deliberately-tricky nesting or comments.

Code examples

import yaml  # pip install pyyaml

with open("gitlab-ci-rules.yml") as f:
    data = yaml.safe_load(f)
print(data)

Generated by generation/pipelines.py. Free for any use, no attribution required — license.