Meaning of CI_JOB_MANUAL

[Michael Remiš]

Hi there,

I was trying to use CI_JOB_MANUAL variable in my gitlab CI configuration, but its meaning is little bit confusing.

From documentation (https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/ci/variables/README.html):

CI_JOB_MANUAL

8.12

all

The flag to indicate that job was manually started

But if I put someting like "echo $CI_JOB_MANUAL" in my script section in .gitlab-ci.yml:

1) when job is configured as "when: manual" it is always printed true

2) when job is NOT configured as "when: manual" it is always printed false (resp. nothing) even if I run job manually using GitLab UI

In my opinion, "The flag to indicate that job was manually started" means actual value independent of what is configured in "when" section.

In addition current meaning is useless as I always know what value I actually have in "when" section...

Any idea how to detect how job was actually triggered?

Thanks for discussion.

[Ramon Fincken]

As per source code in build.rb:

    def action?

      self.when == 'manual'

    end

variables << { key: "CI_JOB_MANUAL", value: 'true', public: true } if action?

so only when when equals manual the CI_JOB_MANUAL is set to true it seam