GitLab Environment Variables are not Resolved in Your Pipeline — Here are Some Fixes.

Environment variables are a useful tool for storing and accessing data in GitLab CI. They allow you to store sensitive information, such as passwords or API keys, in a secure location and reference them in your GitLab CI configuration file or scripts. However, there may be times when your environment variables are not being resolved as expected. Let’s explore some solutions to this problem.

Last update: February 2023

Replicating the problem of unresolved variables

When an environment variable is not resolved or injected by GitLab, no direct error message indicates this. So you need to dig through the job logs and figure out if an unresolved variable is a possible culprit for what you are experiencing.

Most of the time, an API key or password is unresolved, and the authentication to a service fails. To verify that this is the case, the easiest way is to add an echo statement to your pipeline script.

Let’s say I have defined the following variable: MY_SECRET.

The echo command should display the variable. If you see the value of the variable, that is fine.

If you see [MASKED] instead of the value, that is also fine. Masked variables are not displayed in job logs. As a best practice, you should always mask your secrets.

However, if there is an issue, the variable won’t be displayed at all:

An alternative is to use the env command to display all environment variables. This is also a nice way to see which other variables are available that you can use in your…