Right, so you just have a single step and then hand over to a proper script. I’ve seen many people try to put much more complex logic in there before handing over to a proper language.

You’re doing it right by avoiding as much of Gitlab’s CI features. I’ve seen versions where scripts are inlined in the YAML with expressions in random rule fields and pipeline variables thrown all over the place. And don’t get me started on their “includes” keyword, it’s awful in practice, gives me nightmares.

Then I write a Kubernetes manifest in YAML with JSON schema validation and the heart rate goes down again.