Using Steampipe in a GitLab CI/CD Pipeline

GitLab provides a hosted environment in which you can build, test, and deploy software. This happens in a GitLab Runner. Let's install Steampipe into a shared runner on gitlab.com, then install a plugin and run a query.

Installing Steampipe in a GitLab Runner

To run scripts when you push changes to a gitlab.com repo, you place them in a file called .gitlab-ci.yml. Here's an example that installs Steampipe into the runner's environment.

install:
  stage: build
  script:
    - echo "Hello, $GITLAB_USER_LOGIN, let's install Steampipe!"
    - /bin/sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/turbot/steampipe/main/install.sh)"

The official command to install Steampipe begins with sudo. That isn't necessary here, though, because in this environment you already are the root user.

Running Steampipe in a GitLab Runner

Steampipe cannot, however, run as root. So we'll create a non-privileged user, and switch to that user in order to run Steampipe commands. Our first command will install the Hacker News plugin.

install:
  stage: build
  script:
    - echo "Hello, $GITLAB_USER_LOGIN, let's install Steampipe!"
    - adduser --disabled-password --shell /bin/bash jon
    - /bin/sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/turbot/steampipe/main/install.sh)"
    - su jon -c "steampipe plugin install hackernews"

Next, we'll add a file called hn.sql file to the repo.

select 
  id, 
  title
from 
  hackernews_item 
where 
  type = 'story'
  and title is not null
 order by 
   id desc
limit 5

Finally, we'll copy hn.sql into the home directory of the non-privileged user, then run a query.

install:
  stage: build
  script:
    - echo "Hello, $GITLAB_USER_LOGIN, let's install Steampipe!"
    - adduser --disabled-password --shell /bin/bash jon
    - cp hn.sql /home/jon
    - cd /home/jon
    - ls -l
    - /bin/sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/turbot/steampipe/main/install.sh)"
    - su jon -c "steampipe plugin install hackernews"
    - su jon -c "steampipe query hn.sql"

That's it! Now you can use any of Steampipe's plugins and mods to enrich your GitLab pipelines.