Setup Robot Framework pipeline with GitLab CI / CD

Question

So i have written my automated Robot Framework tests and they are in a GitLab repo. I want to run these automatically once a day.

1. Is this possible?
2. Do I need a .gitlab-ci.yml file for it? (if yes what do I put in it?)

Answer 1

Yes you can totally run the robot tests in gitlab ci.

so answer

1. Yes its very much possible , infact that is how you execute pipeline tests . You just need to build a Dockerfile that has the things you need to execute the framework inside docker. Here's the sample dockerfile. I would suggest you wrap the .robot script to run from bash script (like robot -d *.robot).

FROM ubuntu:18.04

ENV LANG=C.UTF-8 LC_ALL=C.UTF-8

RUN apt-get update --fix-missing && \
    apt-get install -y python3-setuptools wget git bzip2 ca-certificates curl bash chromium-browser chromium-chromedriver firefox python3.8 python3-pip nano && \
    apt-get clean && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

RUN wget https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases/download/v0.27.0/geckodriver-v0.27.0-linux64.tar.gz
RUN tar xvf geckodriver*
RUN chmod +x geckodriver
RUN mv geckodriver /usr/bin

RUN update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.6 1
RUN update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.8 2
RUN pip3 install --upgrade pip

RUN ln -s /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/python
RUN ln -s /usr/bin/pip3 /usr/bin/pip

RUN pip install rpaframework

COPY . /usr/src/

ADD robot.sh /usr/local/bin/robot.sh

RUN chmod +x /usr/local/bin/robot.sh

WORKDIR /usr/src

2. Now you need .gitlab-ci.yml in your repository to have a content like this.

stages:
  - build
  - run

variables:
  ARTIFACT_REPORT_PATH: "${CI_PROJECT_DIR}/reports"

build_image:
  stage: build
  variables:
    DOCKER_IMAGE_TAG: ${CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE}:${CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME}
  script:
    - docker build -t ${DOCKER_IMAGE_TAG} .
  after_script:
    - docker push ${DOCKER_IMAGE_TAG}
    - docker logout

robot_tests:
  stage: run
  variables:
    DOCKER_IMAGE_TAG: ${CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE}:${CI_COMMIT_TAG}
  image: ${DOCKER_IMAGE_TAG}
  script:
    - robot-test.sh
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - $ARTIFACT_REPORT_PATH
    when: always

That should be it and once the job finishes you would see the output in the job at the path location in the repository.