Overview

In continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) environments, commit conflicts and race conditions can disrupt the smooth running of pipelines. To address these issues, we’re excited to introduce the serial-jobs feature, which provides a more robust solution for managing job execution order within your pipelines.

Previously, users relied on the queue orb to avoid race conditions and conflicts in their pipelines. With the introduction of serial-jobs, we now offer native support for this functionality, streamlining the process and enhancing overall reliability.

What are Serial-Jobs?

Serial-jobs enable you to serialize individual jobs across your organization, specific projects, or branches based on the parameters you define. This ensures that jobs are executed in the precise order that the pipelines are initiated, whether through commits, API calls, or other triggering methods.

Key Features of Serial-Jobs:

Native Integration: Serial-jobs eliminate the need for the queue orb while maintaining its essential functionality.
Support for Future Use Cases: Over time, we plan to expand serial-jobs to address additional challenges, including multi-job and workflow serialization. For now, the initial release focuses on serial-group for individual jobs.
Organizational Flexibility: You can configure the serialization parameters based on your needs, allowing for tailored job execution strategies.
How It Works
When using serial-jobs, each individual job within your pipeline will wait for its predecessors to complete before starting. This approach guarantees that the jobs run sequentially as per the pipeline initiation order, thus reducing the chances of conflicts arising from concurrent executions.

Example Use Cases:
Branch Workflow Management: Prevent conflicting changes from being deployed simultaneously by serializing job executions for different branches.
API Triggered Jobs: Ensure that jobs triggered via API calls execute in the correct order, preventing overlaps and enhancing reliability.

Documentation and Further Learning

To learn more about your options with the serial-jobs feature, please refer to our comprehensive documentation here. The documentation will provide detailed instructions on how to implement serial-jobs in your pipelines and best practices for maximizing their effectiveness.

By implementing serial-jobs in your pipeline strategy, you can seamlessly manage job executions, mitigate commit conflicts, and streamline your development workflows.