I want to perform tests using gitlab CI using pytest-testmon. Unfortunately it seems that the generated file .testmondata is not saved in the gitlab-runner instances, so that no recollection of what was tested is saved.
Is there a way of saving this .testmondata and using it (for every different branch at test) in order to avoid repeating tests of unchanged code when code is pushed to those branches?
You can upload files generated during your job to Gitlab so you can view them later by downloading them, viewing on a Merge Request, or using them in other jobs by using the artifacts keyword. Here's a simple example:
tests:
stage: tests
script:
- ./run_tests.sh
artifacts:
paths:
- .testmondata
name: "$CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME_tests_testmondata"
expose_as: 'Tests Results'
expire_in: 3 months
In this example, after your script section (and before_script or after_script if present) runs, gitlab-runner will look for a file/directory that matches the entries in the paths array. If none are found, it will throw an error.
The runner will then upload the artifacts to Gitlab using the name in the name field. It's good practice to use some of the predefined variables that Gitlab CI provides so you can easily identify which pipeline and job an artifact came from, if necessary. In this example the name has the branch or tag name, and then _tests_testmondata.
The next attribute, expose_as lets you put a link on a Merge Request for this branch to display the artifacts. Without expose_as, you'll have to open the Pipeline and Job to view the artifacts.
Next, expire_in lets you define when the artifacts from this job should expire. If you don't set this attribute, the artifacts will expire based on the Gitlab server's setting, which by default is 30 days. You can supply a number of seconds as an int (3600, or one hour), never (to never expire), or many other human-readable formats like 3 years 8 months 28 days or 46 months.
You can view all the available predefined variables here: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/variables/predefined_variables.html, and you can view all the options for the artifacts keyword here: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/#artifacts