Running Continuous Integration suites

Continuous Integration (CI) runs can be triggered in several ways:

Once the validation tests have completed, you can review the results, as described on the Viewing Continuous Integration run results documentation page.

Automatic triggering from pull requests

If you have enabled your CI suite with Trigger on pull requests from Looker, CI will trigger a validation run automatically when a Looker developer submits a pull request to your LookML repository. (You can optionally specify that pull requests only to certain branches in your repository should trigger automatic CI runs.)

For automatic pull request validation runs, CI validates the latest pull request commit and returns all of the errors in that version of the repository.

See the Viewing Continuous Integration run results documentation page for information on viewing the results.

Manually triggering a new run of a CI suite

A Looker user with the see_ci permission can manually trigger a CI run from the Looker IDE.

To manually trigger a new run of a CI suite, follow these steps:

  1. From the Looker IDE, click the Continuous Integration icon from the IDE navigation bar.
  2. Click Suites to open the Suites page.
  3. Click the Run suite button for the CI suite that you want to run (if you don't have any CI suites for your project, you can create a CI suite).

  4. In the Trigger a run manually dialog, use the Workspace options to select the branch that you want to validate (see the Workspace section for details):

    • To validate the production version of your LookML project, click Production.
    • If you want to validate a development branch of your LookML project, click Dev Mode. Use the Branch pull-down menu to select which development branch to validate.

  5. To trigger the run of the CI suite, click Start run.

The CI suite may take several minutes to complete running, depending on the size of your project, the validators that are included in the CI suite, and the configuration of the CI suite.

After you trigger a run, the Looker IDE will display the Run page for the suite that you triggered. Once the validation tests are completed, the Run page will show the results for each of the validators. You can navigate away from the Run page while the validation tests are running, and then later return to the Run page to see the results.

See the Viewing Continuous Integration run results documentation page for information on viewing the results.

Workspace

When you manually trigger a CI run, you can use the Workspace options to validate either the production version of your repository or a development branch of your repository.

For the Production option, if you want to identify which branch or commit is used for the production version, you can look in the Looker IDE in the Default Production Branch field of the Git Summary section of the Branch Management page of the Project Settings:

  • For projects configured with advanced deploy mode, the production version is a commit or tag that is selected in the deployment manager by a Looker developer who has the deploy permission.
  • For projects without advanced deploy mode, the production version is the branch configured in the Git Production Branch Name field in the Project Configuration page of the Project Settings.

For the Dev Mode option, note the following for validating development branches in your project:

  • To see the branches in your LookML project and to identify the production branch and the personal branches of your developers, refer to the Branch Management page of the Project Settings of your project in the Looker IDE.
  • To validate a development branch, the development branch must be pushed to your LookML repository. In the Looker IDE, that means the developer must click the Commit Changes & Push button or select the Commit option from the Git Actions panel in the IDE.

Manually re-running a previous CI run

For runs that have finished (if the run passed, failed, errored, or was cancelled), a Looker user with the see_ci permission can manually trigger a rerun of the CI run from the Looker IDE:

  • If you rerun a PR-triggered run, Continuous Integration runs against the same commit as the original run.
  • If you rerun a manually-triggered run, Continuous Integration runs against the production state or branch HEAD at the time of the rerun, which will include any subsequents commits that were made since the initial CI run.

In addition, if you have edited the CI suite since the initial run, a rerun will include any changes that you made to the CI suite since the initial run.

To rerun a CI run, follow these steps:

  1. From the Looker IDE, click the Continuous Integration icon from the IDE navigation bar.
  2. Click Runs to open the Runs page.
  3. On the Runs page, click the View Run button for the CI run you want to cancel.
  4. On the run results page for the selected run, click the Rerun button at the top of the page.

Once you click Rerun, the Content Validator will initiate the run and return you to the Run page for the new run.

See the Viewing Continuous Integration run results documentation page for information on viewing the results.

Cancelling a CI run

If you want to cancel a CI run that is running, you can do so from its Run page by following these steps:

  1. From the Looker IDE, click the Continuous Integration icon from the IDE navigation bar.
  2. Click Runs to open the Runs page.
  3. On the Runs page, click the View Run button for the CI run you want to cancel.
  4. On the Run page for the selected run, click the Cancel button at the top of the page.

Once you click Cancel, Continuous Integration will cancel the run display the Cancelled status on the Run page.