Environment varibles shared between bitbuck pipeline steps

Question

I have a number of steps in my pipeline, the first step creates many environment variables via a script which 'exports' them.

#!/bin/bash
set -e

prefix="GitVersion_"
for row in $(mono ../tools/GitVersion/GitVersion.exe | jq -c -r 'to_entries[]'); do
    key=$(echo "${row}" | jq -c -r '(.key)')
    value=$(echo "${row}" | jq -c -r '(.value)')
    export $(echo "${prefix}${key}=${value}");
done

Unfortunately it seems they are then not avaliable within the following steps.

- step:
    name: Build version
    image: mono:5.12
    script:
        - ...
        - ./scripts/gitversion.sh
        - printenv
- step:
    name: Build
    image: microsoft/aspnetcore-build:2.0-stretch
    script:
        - printenv
        - ...

In 'build version' step my printenv shows all my newly created envionment variables. However the first line of my build step does not have them. I understand these are created locally to the container of the previous step and therefore they would not be carried over however I need some way to do this.

Since they are created dynamicly I cannot add them to the project environment settings which get injected into each step. I need the to be created dynamicly at build, but global to the whole pipeline.

Is it possible to create global pipeline varables?

oschoenborn · Answer

I have created https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BCLOUD-20294

oschoenborn · Answer

It bugs me too that there isn't an easy way of sharing vars across steps. An approach that is a bit easier than the one involving generating a text file and parsing it in the next step is to directly save to a format that can be sourced by shell in the next step. So at the end of each step, I have some lines like this:

# share variables with other steps:
- echo export IMAGE_TAG=$IMAGE_TAG > shared_vars.sh
- echo export IMAGE_NAME=$IMAGE_NAME >> shared_vars.sh

Then in subsequent steps I just need one line at the top of the script element, like this:

- source shared_vars.sh

This isn't too bad. Actually you would think Atlassian could automate this:

* have a section above pipelines where you can define variable names, eg

sharedVars:
  - IMAGE_TAG
  - IMAGE_NAME

* The bitbucket pipelines, when it creates the script from the list of lines under `script`, and copies it into the container (I'm guessing that's how it does it), it appends code to export the value of each var appearing in sharedVars, just like I did; the file would a temporary "hidden" artifact.
* Before each step, Pipelines inserts a line before the first line under script, to source that env-var-sharing artifact, and voila!

I'll see if I can submit a feature request for this.

unknown · Answer

Hello,

This looks like a quick workaround, but not a serious way to set shared variables between steps.

By common variables I mean context for the step (when step's script is coming from a YAML anchor to be shared), like iMAGE_NAME, IMAGE_TAG for example ?

This is less than optimal to repeat 4, or 8 times the same definitions or to add lines to tinker with printenv to accomplish that.

Can we expect a common key for variables that could be initialised and set inside the container running each step, like we do with GitlabCI ?

Thank you.