GitLab Ci with docker runner - Multiple Stages

Question

im setting up my first GitLab Ci Pipeline including docker to run my project. I wanted to divide my pipeline into several stages so i created "build", "test", and "clean-build".

In this scenario everything works fine:

stages:
  - build
  - test
  - clean

image: docker:latest

services:
  - docker:dind

before_script:
  - export RELEASE=${CI_BUILD_REF_NAME}
  - docker version

build:
  stage: build
  tags:
    - sendis-dind
  script:
  - echo "Hallo in Build Stage"

test:
  stage: test
  tags:
    - sendis-dind
  script:
    - echo "Hallo in TEST Stage"

clean-build:
  stage: clean
  tags:
    - sendis-dind
  script:
    - echo "Hallo beim Clean Up"
  when: always

All 3 stages are run successfully

but this fails:

stages:
  - build
  - test
  - clean

image: docker:latest

services:
  - docker:dind

before_script:
  - export RELEASE=${CI_BUILD_REF_NAME}
  - docker version

build:
  stage: build
  tags:
    - sendis-dind
  script:
  - apk add --update py-pip
  - pip install docker-compose
  - docker --version
  - docker-compose --version
  - docker-compose -p ${RELEASE} build
  - docker-compose -p ${RELEASE} up -d

test:
  stage: test
  tags:
    - sendis-dind
  script:
    - docker exec ${RELEASE}_phpfpm_1 bash -c "cd /app; composer install; make runTests"

clean-build:
  stage: clean
  tags:
    - sendis-dind
  script:
    - docker-compose -p ${RELEASE} down --volumes
  when: always

with the following message from second stage

Running with gitlab-ci-multi-runner 9.1.1 (6104325)
  on sendis-dind-runner (8b9eca1e)
Using Docker executor with image docker:latest ...
Starting service docker:dind ...
Pulling docker image docker:dind ...
Using docker image docker:dind ID=sha256:559dd16b4e0a64d9de2447d3de234743046443f770bf5226f45f9b7f9c68887b for docker service...
ERROR: Preparation failed: Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?
Will be retried in 3s ...
Using Docker executor with image docker:latest ...
Starting service docker:dind ...
Pulling docker image docker:dind ...
Using docker image docker:dind ID=sha256:559dd16b4e0a64d9de2447d3de234743046443f770bf5226f45f9b7f9c68887b for docker service...
ERROR: Preparation failed: Error response from daemon: Conflict. The container name "/runner-8b9eca1e-project-140-concurrent-0-docker" is already in use by container "db166f7894856c245c6a4f5318326c5f3b6ab82d82157961d18b079444153113". You have to remove (or rename) that container to be able to reuse that name.
Will be retried in 3s ...
Using Docker executor with image docker:latest ...
Starting service docker:dind ...
Pulling docker image docker:dind ...
Using docker image docker:dind ID=sha256:559dd16b4e0a64d9de2447d3de234743046443f770bf5226f45f9b7f9c68887b for docker service...
ERROR: Preparation failed: Error response from daemon: Conflict. The container name "/runner-8b9eca1e-project-140-concurrent-0-docker" is already in use by container "db166f7894856c245c6a4f5318326c5f3b6ab82d82157961d18b079444153113". You have to remove (or rename) that container to be able to reuse that name.
Will be retried in 3s ...
ERROR: Job failed (system failure): Error response from daemon: Conflict. The container name "/runner-8b9eca1e-project-140-concurrent-0-docker" is already in use by container "db166f7894856c245c6a4f5318326c5f3b6ab82d82157961d18b079444153113". You have to remove (or rename) that container to be able to reuse that name.

Answer 1

Different stages only share artifacts with each other, but they're separate docker containers. That means that if you run docker-compose up -d in your build stage, the containers are not running in the test stage.

Combining dind with gitlab-ci is only necessary in very specific use-cases. In your case, you don't need dind at all. You can simply use the php-fpm image in your test step, since gitlab-ci is already running on docker.

test:
  stage: test
  image: <your php-fpm image here>
  script:
    - cd /app
    - composer install
    - make runTests