Schedule or trigger jobs in gitlab-ci

Question

I want to run a heavy test only once per day in Gitlab-ci. Is it possible schedule a job? Or is it possible to set it to manual and trigger it using the API?

Answer 1

It's possible to schedule a pipeline since GitLab 9.1, see: https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/user/project/pipelines/schedules.html

Currently (i.e. with version 9.2) it can be configured as follows:

1. Navigate to your project's Pipelines ➔ Schedules and click the New Schedule button.
2. Fill in the form
3. Hit Save pipeline schedule for the changes to take effect.

Answer 2

It's a patch up job, but you could use triggers with a if statement :

test_app:
  stage: test
  script:
  - if [ -n "${DO_TESTS}" ]; then make test; fi

And define the variable in the cron that make the call :

curl --request POST \
  --form token=TOKEN \
  --form ref=master \
  --form "variables[DO_TESTS]=true" \
  https://gitlab.example.com/api/v3/projects/9/trigger/builds

See the doc : https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/ci/triggers/README.html