Great question! To become proficient in GitLab Pipelines (CI/CD) — whether you’re aiming for day-to-day development, DevOps engineering, or GitLab administration — you’ll want to cover the full lifecycle from pipeline basics to advanced optimization and deployment strategies.
Here’s a structured roadmap of topics to master GitLab Pipelines (as of GitLab 18.0, May 2025):
🚀 GitLab Pipeline Learning Roadmap
🔰 1. Foundations: Getting Started
| Topic | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| What is CI/CD and GitLab CI | Understand how GitLab CI/CD fits into modern DevOps |
Structure of .gitlab-ci.yml | Learn how pipelines are defined and triggered |
| Basic pipeline execution (stages, jobs, scripts) | Build simple pipelines with build, test, deploy stages |
| Pipeline flow: from commit to deployment | Know what triggers pipelines and how jobs run |
🧱 2. Core Components
| Topic | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| Stages and Jobs | Break down processes by category (build, test, etc.) |
| Runners (Shared vs. Specific) | Understand what executes your jobs and how to manage them |
| Artifacts & Cache | Store and reuse job outputs and dependencies |
| Variables (env & secret) | Use dynamic values and securely manage credentials |
| YAML anchors & includes | Reuse configuration and modularize your pipelines |
| Manual & Delayed Jobs | Control flow for approvals or time-based releases |
📦 3. Intermediate Topics
| Topic | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| Pipeline Triggers & Schedules | Automate based on events or cron expressions |
| Rules vs. only/except | Control pipeline flow with conditions |
| Dependencies & Needs | Define job relationships, parallelism, and execution order |
| Parent-Child Pipelines | Break up complex pipelines into reusable templates |
| Multi-project Pipelines | Coordinate pipelines across different projects |
| Pipeline Artifacts Browsing | Debug and inspect artifacts visually in GitLab UI |
🔐 4. Advanced Topics
| Topic | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| Environments & Deployments | Map your CI to dev/stage/prod environments |
| Feature Flags + Deploy Boards | Control features at runtime; monitor deployments |
| Dynamic Child Pipelines | Create pipeline configurations on the fly (e.g., per microservice) |
| Secrets Management (Vault, CI/CD variables, HashiCorp Vault) | Securely inject secrets into jobs |
| Security Scans (SAST, DAST, etc.) | Integrate security into your pipelines (DevSecOps) |
| Pipeline Templates and Includes | Share and maintain standard CI logic across projects |
📈 5. Optimization & Observability
| Topic | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| Pipeline Performance | Optimize speed and resource usage |
| Retry Strategies & Job Failures | Improve reliability of builds |
| CI/CD Analytics | Measure pipeline trends and identify bottlenecks |
| Debugging Tips & Job Logs | Efficiently troubleshoot broken pipelines |
| Timeouts, Tags, and Resource Groups | Ensure proper job isolation and control execution environments |
🌐 6. Ecosystem Integration
| Topic | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| GitLab Pages deployment | Build & deploy static websites |
| Docker & Kubernetes Deployments | Push containers to GitLab Registry or deploy to K8s |
| Terraform with GitLab CI | Use IaC pipelines for cloud infrastructure |
| Integration with cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure) | Automate cloud deployments and cloud-native pipelines |
🧪 Learning by Doing
✅ Build These Hands-On Examples:
- ✅ A basic pipeline with unit tests and a linter
- ✅ A multi-stage Docker build with deploy to staging
- ✅ A scheduled pipeline that runs nightly security scans
- ✅ A parent-child pipeline that builds multiple microservices
- ✅ A pipeline that deploys to Firebase, S3, or Kubernetes
📚 Suggested Learning Resources
| Resource | Description |
|---|---|
| GitLab CI/CD Docs | Official GitLab documentation |
| GitLab CI/CD Examples | Ready-to-use .gitlab-ci.yml samples |
| GitLab Learn | Free courses on GitLab pipelines and DevOps |
| DevOps with GitLab | Strategy guides and best practices |
| GitLab Certification Paths | For professional recognition (CI/CD certification etc.) |