Run Bitbucket Pipelines locally for testing

Question

I understand that there is an official suggestion to run the same docker image on my local environment and run there all the script I am using in my bitbucket-pipelines.yml.

But I would like to actually use my bitbucket-pipelines.yml and test it "as is", before commiting it to the repo.

This is will give me the ability to tweak it as much as possible before commiting, thus saves me a lot of debuging commits.

Anyone has a way to do that?

Thomas Lunsford · Answer

It would be really helpful if we had a docker compose file that fired up any necessary local servers and agents to replicate things locally. TeamCity provides info on how to do this, but their kotlin approach requires too much learning to make it helpful to optimize our dev experience.

Ultimately we need somthing like this to shift left on the development process - do as much locally as makes sense, and the same way as in the server pipeline.

Theodora Boudale · Answer

Hi Timor,

If you are referring to debugging pipelines locally as per this guide, then there is no way to use the bitbucket-pipelines.yml file "as is". In this case, you run in the container the commands that you intend to use in your bitbucket-pipelines.yml file.

You can always create a fork of the repo for testing purposes and use it with a Linux Docker runner as Erez suggested (so that you don't consume build minutes), and eventually delete the fork. Please keep in mind that if you use any user-defined variables or deployment environments in the fork's builds, you will need to create them also in the repo where you want to run the builds eventually.

Kind regards,
Theodora

TimorKalerman · Answer

Thank you @Erez Maadani , I will test it, but it will still require me to do commits for each fix instead of testing locally on my pc before I commit.

Anyway I guess currently there is no way for it, but hopefully Atlassian will release such tool.

I know Google Cloud Build for example has such tool for local debugging and it is very helpful.