Builds and pipelines

The CI Builds page is where service images are built without anything being rolled out.

The typical scenario: you need to check that a branch builds at all, or to prepare an image in advance so that it can later be put on a stand by simply picking its tag.

What a build is and where GitLab comes in

The build itself does not happen in PDM. PDM starts a pipeline — a build script in GitLab — and then watches it: it polls the pipeline's state roughly every 10 seconds, collects the logs and shows the outcome. When the pipeline succeeds, PDM reads the tag of the published image out of its logs — that tag is the result of the build.

Two practical consequences follow:

• the duration of a build is determined by the pipeline, not by PDM. An hour in the Running state is fine if the pipeline really does take an hour;
• failures are investigated in GitLab. PDM shows you what failed and gives you a link; why it failed is written in the pipeline.

The name of a pipeline started from PDM carries your login, so your own build is easy to pick out among everyone else's.

Starting a build

The Trigger New Build card is only visible if you have the permission to start builds. It lists the services that have buildable actions — services that can only set a tag do not appear here, as there is nothing to build.

To build, pick an action — a branch build or a version build — and fill in the value. The branch and tag options are loaded from GitLab, and the service's current version is prefilled as the default.

Several services can be built at once: tick the rows you need, fill in a value in each and click Build Selected (N). The builds are started one after another, one at a time.

Build history

The Recent Builds card is the build history. The Target column shows, next to the value (branch, version or tag), the short commit hash where it is known.

Statuses

Status	Colour	What it means
Queued	grey	The build is registered, the pipeline has not started yet
Running	blue	The pipeline is running
Success	green	The pipeline finished successfully, the image is built
Failed	red	The pipeline failed or was cancelled

A cancelled pipeline is shown as Failed

There is no separate "cancelled" status on this page — a cancellation ends up as Failed.

Actions on a build

• Retry — available on failed builds only. Restarts the same build with the same parameters; a new row appears in the list and the old one stays.
• Pipeline — a link to the pipeline in GitLab. It appears once PDM knows its address.
• Workspace — the workspace page of this build: step-by-step progress, logs, error details.
• Clear completed — removes finished builds from the screen, leaving the active ones. This clears the view rather than deleting anything: reload the page and the rows are back.

How to find a particular build

The page has no search and no filters — the list is sorted from newest to oldest.

It helps to know whose builds you are seeing in the first place:

• by default the list holds your builds only;
• seeing other users' builds requires a separate permission, granted by an administrator.

So an empty list means "you have not started anything", not "there are no builds in the system".

The build list does not refresh itself

Unlike the workspace page, the Recent Builds table is loaded once when the page opens. To see fresh statuses, open the page again — or follow the Workspace button into the workspace, where progress is live.

Building as part of a deploy

A build can also be started without visiting this page — directly while changing a service's version on a stand. Such a build does not show up on the CI Builds page: it is not standalone but part of a deploy, and its progress is visible in the Workspaces section. The procedure is described under Application actions.

See also

• Application actions — what each action does and how a built image reaches a stand.
• Workspaces — workspaces, steps, logs and links to pipelines.
• Applications — where to see the current versions of services.