How to prevent cloud build from running builds in parallel?

Question

We are using cloud build for continuous deployment on GCP. When pushing commits to fast (e.g. on development) the triggered builds are running in parallel. Sometimes those interfere which one another. For example when two app engine deployments are running at the same time.

Is there a way or best practise to force builds which are triggered from the same build trigger to run one after another?

Regards, Carsten

Answer 1

I've done this by adding an initial step on my cloudbuild.yaml file. What it does is:

• Gets all the ongoing build id via gcloud builds list --ongoing --format='value(id)' --filter="substitutions.TRIGGER_NAME=$TRIGGER_NAME".
• Loop through it but skip the first one, the list is sorted by latest created time so it won't stop the latest build which is the first index
• Run gcloud builds cancel ${on_going_build[i]} to cancel the build

Please see the cloudbuild.yaml below

steps:
  - id: "Stop Other Ongoing Build"
    name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/gcloud'
    entrypoint: 'bash'
    args:
    - -c
    - |
      on_going_build=($(gcloud builds list --ongoing --format='value(id)' --filter="substitutions.TRIGGER_NAME=$TRIGGER_NAME" | xargs))
      for (( i=0; i<${#on_going_build[@]}; i++ )); do
        if [ "$i" -gt "0" ]; then # skip current
          echo "Cancelling build ${on_going_build[i]}"

          gcloud builds cancel ${on_going_build[i]}
        fi
      done