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Shared volumes between builds

How to copy data from one pipeline step to the next

Using this repository, we’ll help you get up to speed with basic functionality such as: building Docker images and use the shared volume feature.

The shared volume

Codefresh creates a shared volume in each pipeline that is automatically shared on all freestyle steps.

Codefresh volume

All steps share the same volume

This volume exists at /codefresh/volume by default. You can simply copy files there to have them available in all Codefresh steps (as well as subsequent builds of the same pipeline)

Notice that the git clone step will delete any files not mentioned in .gitignore. Therefore if you want to cache a folder that exists in your project directory (such as node_modules) you also need to add it to .gitignore

Looking around

This project uses Node Js to build an application which will eventually become a distributable Docker image. If you want to save something data in shared volume you can do it using freestyle step. You will be able to get access to this volume in another build.

In the root of this repository you’ll find a file named codefresh.yml, this is our build descriptor and it describes the different steps that comprise our process. Let’s quickly review the contents of this file:

codefresh.yml

freestyle_step:
    image: ${{build_prj}}
    working_directory: ${{main_clone}}
    fail_fast: false
    commands:
      - cp path/to/file /codefresh/volume/filename

Caching build dependencies

More information about caching build dependencies you can find in this blog post.

Example Source code

Just head over to the example repository in GitHub and follow the instructions there.

The way the volume is shared between builds is that upon build completion we create an image of the volume state to be used in the next builds. If you run 2 builds in parallel from the same pipeline and at the same time, each will use the same last volume image, but it’ll run separately on both. The volume image you’ll get upon completion is the state of the build that finished last.