Step 2: Configure your repository
You will likely receive a DM in Mattermost with the link to your initialized repository. If your project was named my-project, expect the repository will be located at:
The Digitize Tutorial provides a good guide to learn how to configure your repository.
Expect that you will adjust several CI/CD settings and add several environment variables. Precisely which you need to set will depend on what type of site you are building.
Build Tools
The guide is designed for a React App, but you can use the following systems to build your site:
Help
The available CI/CD pipeline config files are viewable on the Digitize repository here.
Env Variables
The following environment variables are required for the CI/CD pipeline to run:
Help
The Digitize Tutorial for details and a more complete discussion of these environment variables.
- BUILD_OUTPUT_DIR => Required for npm, yarn, mkdocs, hugo
- DIGITIZE_DEPLOYMENT_TYPE => branch or tag
- DIGITIZE_REGISTRY_ACCESS_TOKEN => reference docs. This value is in not unique to your project and is listed in the docs.
- DIGITIZE_IL_TYPE => IL4, Digitize only supports IL4 deployment at this time.
- SKIP_E2E_TEST => Set to true to skip running e2e tests. They're broken right now.
Protected Branches
This was the weird thing for me at first.
The idea is that there are two types of pipelines. Full Staging/Deployment pipleines and a mini-pipeline for branches. The only difference is that the mini-pipeline does not push to staging or production.
The full pipeline can only be used on your master branch.
The mini pipelines will only run on protected branches.
This is why you need protected branches. Unprotected branches cannot run pipelines and cannot merge into master.
You can protect a specific branch, but that is cumbersome. GitLab lets you define a pattern with wildcard matching that will match the branch name and then protect that branch. For example a branch called fix/fix-rendering-issue would be protected with the pattern fix/*.
This forces a branch-naming convention because your branches must comply with these patterns otherwise they will not build or merge.
Tip
Protect patterns fix/* and feature/* for your branches. This lets you work on new capabilities within the feature namespace and bug fixes within the fix namespace.
Tip
Allow Maintainers to merge and Developers+Maintainers to push.
React specific
You need to add a homepage field to your package.json file and set its value to ".". This is required for running the React App in a nested path.
Congratulations
Your repository should be ready to begin building your site!