Is it possible to pass the `deployment` arg to the docker runner?

[Steven]

Given the following step,

name: Deploy to staging
deployment: test

Where `deployment` is set to `test`, I'd like to have my dockerfile perform different actions that would go further in preparing a testing environment. This would require the `deployment` variable being passed into the docker runner as a run variable.

Is this possible? If not, is there another way to achieve this?

[mwatson · Accepted solution]

No, but there is a workaround for this - you can set an environment variable as per Deployment variables under https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/variables-in-pipelines-794502608.html and let it have the name of the environment in it - 

[Steven]

Great.

My bitbucket-pipelines file looks something like this:

- step:
    name: Deploy to production
    deployment: production
    trigger: manual
    script:
      - apt-get update && apt-get install -y curl
      - curl -O https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
      - python get-pip.py
      - pip3 install awsebcli --upgrade
      - eb init fun-app -r ap-southeast-2 -p docker
      - eb deploy fun-app-env

How/where would I be passing in that variable as a Dockerfile argument?

[mwatson]

I'm not sure what you mean by "passing in that variable as a Dockerfile argument" - I'm going to assume you mean how would you be able to use that within your build script:

If you go to your repo->settings->Deployments->click on a environment (test)-> you can then add a variable, called, say "ENVIRONMENT" and set the value to "test" and then do the same for staging and production. Then in your script in the yml you'll be able to do:

 - if [ "${ENVIRONMENT}" = "test" ]; then xyz; fi

 Note also that we just released a feature called Bitbucket Pipes that has a Pipe for deploying to elastic beanstallk that you might want to use instead of what you're doing in your yml

[Steven]

As in a docker build ARG that I could read and code against within the Dockerfile. 

https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/build/#set-build-time-variables---build-arg

The idea here is to be able to pass additional context when building the container so that I can change what is actually being built.

[mwatson]

Ah, now I get you - I didn't follow that it was `eb init -p docker` - I don't know if there is a way to do this - you might need to ask in a awsebcli forum. A workaround would be to substitute the variable straight into your Dockerfile inside pipelines before calling `eb init` - e.g. `sed -e 's/<ENV>/${ENVIRONMENT}/' Dockerfile.in > Dockerfile` for example...