how does one run pull request steps in parallel?

[Vincent Jong]

So, we have in our bitbucket-pipelines yaml and want to run the 'default' PR rule with 2 steps in parallel. Like, using your doc example:

pipelines:
 pull-requests:
   '**':
     - parallel:
       steps:
         - step: *testEndToEndInDev
         - step: *testEndToEndInStg
 custom:
   e2e-wfw:
     - step: *testEndToEndInWfw
   e2e-dev:
     - step: *testEndToEndInDev
   e2e-stg:
     - step: *testEndToEndInStg

 This doesn't work as my ide is showing an error really from steps not being in the schema:

Is this even possible? If so, what do I need to do?

[Ben · Accepted solution]

Hi Vincent,

As long as the testEndToEndInDev and testEndToEndInStg steps are being defined using YAML anchors so that they may be referenced with a * symbol, the code that you have provided should work. 

Have you tested the code within Bitbucket Pipelines by running a build? May I know what was the result? As long as there are no errors highlighted within the YML editor itself in the UI (disregarding your IDE), the code is considered to be syntactically correct.

Cheers!

- Ben (Bitbucket Cloud Support)

[Vincent Jong]

From what I observed, the steps seem to run serially. The first rule runs to completion, then the second rule runs. Running the config above fails, but that's due to creating the reports dir which is something I would need to fix. But either way, perhaps that's how the parallel steps are supposed to run?

[Ben]

Are you able to test these steps outside of a PR definition? For example, a custom pipeline and tell me if the behaviour is the same?

[Vincent Jong]

I don't know what happened before, but Redoing the config and running the branch against the PR ** rule, now looks like it's working as expected now... Thanks for the help!