User defined variables in Gitlab CI environment URL empty

Question

I have the following (simplified) gitlab-ci.yml:

variables:
  APP_NAME: "hello-gitlab-ci"
deploy:
  stage: deploy
  script: some-script
environment:
  name: staging
  url: http://hostname/$APP_NAME/$CI_BUILD_REF_NAME

The resulting url in the Gitlab UI is e.g.: http://hostname//master. $APP_NAME seems to resolve to an empty String, whereas the runner variable $CI_BUILD_REF_NAME resolves correctly.

GitLab Community Edition 8.13.0, gitlab-runner 1.7.1. What am I missing?

Answer 1

From GitLab doc, the YAML-defined variables are supported with GitLab Runner 0.5.0 or higher and GitLab CI 7.14 or higher, so first, check your GitLab component versions.

Try also enabling debug, to have more clues on why this variable is not resolved:

job1:
  variables:
    CI_DEBUG_TRACE: "true"

Answer 2

This is most likely a bug in GitLab Runner where the env variables are defined after the environment but before the script. Have you considered opening an issue? https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ci-multi-runner/issues