Modify plan variables with Bamboo Specs

[setycz]

Previously, users could modify the bamboo plan variables used e.g. for the major version of the component being build. With Bamboo Specs, plans are read-only, thus you cannot do so. I understand that the proper way is to change the variable in the Specs in the repository, but are there any other options?

For example, what you can do is to run a customised build and change them. Theoretically, you can disable your automatic triggers and do only customised builds. But, as you can imagine, this would be really tedious and not very pleasant. Wouldn't it be great to have the configuration for customised run saved so you don't have to type it each run? I.e. allow the modification of plan variables for bamboo specs?

[setycz · Accepted solution]

We solved the issue by having the version in the VCS. The more we thought about it, the more we were sure that this is the right thing to do and even if there would be some support in Bamboo for it we would rather keep it in VCS. The benefits are:

- we can see who and when changed it

- we can checkout any commit and see the complete image (e.g. what were the variable values at that time)

- it's pushing us to automate things more (to remove the need for a such variable).

[Soeren Rumpf]

@setycz did you manage to use the "Naming versions for deployment releases" feature together with "automatic incrementing" your plan variables which you control via bamboo specs? 

I'm asking because I'm looking for a way to control the plans and deployment projects via bamboo specs but also would like to use the automatic incrementing feature so that the developers don't need to increment the RC numbers each time they're creating a deployment release. But since I'd like to reset the RC number to 1, each time the major or minor version is incremented, it seems like there is no way to make this work together with the automatic incrementing feature or am I missing something here?

[Saif]

Is there a solution/workaround available?

For our new CI plan in Bamboo we are in need of modifying deploy jobs global variables outside spec for custom deploys.

possible?

[Soeren Rumpf]

I ended up in doing it probably the same way as setycz did it.

In the build plan, we're parsing the source code file containing the version numbers. Those information are then put into a file to be able to use the "bamboo variables inject" task, which then adds the version information to the build plan. The deployment job then picks up the build plan inject variables to create the release versioning.