Database GitOps with GitLab CI

This is part of our database GitOps series with Bytebase:

• Database GitOps with GitHub Actions
• Database GitOps with Azure DevOps Pipeline
• Database GitOps with GitLab CI (this one)
• Database GitOps with Bitbucket Pipelines

This tutorial shows you how to build an database GitOps workflow using GitLab CI and Bytebase API. You’ll learn to create a streamlined database release workflow where you can:

• Submit schema migrations through GitLab
• Automatically run SQL reviews on merge requests
• Auto-create and deploy Bytebase releases when merging to main

While we use GitLab CI in this guide, you can apply these concepts to other CI platforms like GitHub Actions, Bitbucket Pipelines, or Azure DevOps using the Bytebase API.

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Repository

https://gitlab.com/bytebase-sample/gitops-example

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Prerequisites

• Docker installed
• An ngrok account

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Enable Automatic Rollout Across Environments

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Step 1 - Start Bytebase with ngrok

ngrok is a reverse proxy tunnel that provides a public network address to access Bytebase. We use ngrok here for demonstration purposes.

1. Run Bytebase in Docker with the following command:

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   docker run --rm --init \
     --name bytebase \
     --publish 8080:8080 --pull always \
     --volume ~/.bytebase/data:/var/opt/bytebase \
     bytebase/bytebase:3.8.0
   

2. Once Bytebase is running in Docker, you can access it at localhost:8080.

3. Log in to the ngrok Dashboard and complete the Getting Started steps to install and configure ngrok. To use a consistent domain, navigate to Universal Gateway > Endpoints to find your assigned domain: <<YOURS>>.ngrok-free.app.

4. Start ngrok with your domain by running:

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   ngrok http --url=<<YOURS>>.ngrok-free.app 8080
   

   You should see output similar to this:

5. You can now access Bytebase at https://<<YOURS>>.ngrok-free.app.

6. (Optional) To configure SSO (Entra/SCIM), Log in to Bytebase, click Settings > General in the left sidebar. Scroll to the Network section, set https://<<YOURS>>.ngrok-free.app as the External URL and click Confirm and update.

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Step 2 - Create Service Account

1. Log in as Workspace Admin, and go to IAM & Admin > Users & Groups. Click + Add User, fill in with api-sample, choose the Workspace DBA role sufficient for this tutorial and click Confirm.

2. Find the newly created service account and Copy Service Key. We will use this token to authenticate the API calls.

If you have Enterprise Plan, you can create a Custom Role for the service account which require fewer permissions, and assign this role instead of DBA:

• plans.create
• plans.get
• plans.preview
• releases.check
• releases.create
• releases.get
• rollouts.create
• rollouts.get
• rollouts.list
• sheets.create
• sheets.get
• taskRuns.create
• planCheckRuns.list
• planCheckRuns.run

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Step 3 - Configure SQL Review in Bytebase

Since you will need to run SQL review on your PRs, you need to configure the SQL review in Bytebase.

1. Go to CI/CD > SQL Review, click Create SQL Review.

2. Select the Sample Template and click Next.

3. Select Prod environment as the attached resources and click Confirm. Now the SQL review is enabled for the Prod environment.

Note: Usually we enable SQL review for Prod environment as above. In this demo, we would switch to enable it for Test to fit the following GitLab CI workflow.

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Step 4 - Copy the Example Repository and Configure Variables

1. Create a new repository and copy the configuration files from https://gitlab.com/bytebase-sample/gitops-example. There are two ymls in this repository:

   • .gitlab-ci.yml: The CI pipeline for the repository which includes the SQL review and release creation.
   • bytebase-review.yml: Lint the SQL migration files after the MR is created.
   • bytebase-rollout.yml: Create a release in Bytebase after the MR is merged to the main branch.

2. Go into bytebase-review.yml and bytebase-rollout.yml. In the env section, replace the variable values with your own and commit the changes.

   • BYTEBASE_URL: your ngrok url
   • BYTEBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT: api-example@service.bytebase.com (the service account you created in the previous step)
   • BYTEBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_SECRET: the password of the service account

In bytebase-rollout.yml, pay attention to BYTEBASE_TARGETS in deploy-to-test stage. You should put all the databases including both Test and Prod environments. NOT ONLY the Test database.

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Step 5 - Create the migration files

To create migration files to trigger release creation, the files have to match the following pattern:

• A migration file should start with digits, which is also its version. e.g. 202505121650_create_table_t1.sql.
• A migration file may end with ddl or dml to indicate its change type. If it doesn’t end with any of the two, its change type is DDL by default.

1. Within your forked repository, create the following migration files under migration directory:

   • 202505121650_create_table_t1.sql
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   CREATE TABLE t1 (
    id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    name TEXT
   );
   

2. Commit to a new branch and create a merge request, the sql-review pipeline will be triggered. There will be a warning in the SQL review result.

3. According to the SQL review result, you can do some changes to the SQL files and push to the branch. Then you should see the SQL review has passed. There are no warnings in the SQL review result.

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    CREATE TABLE t1 (
    id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    name TEXT NOT NULL
   );
   

4. When the SQL review is passed, you can merge the merge request. The release pipeline will be triggered to create a release in Bytebase and then roll out automatically.

5. Click into the pipelines, you can see the release pipeline is triggered and passed. Click the number of the pipeline, you can see the stages.

6. If you click the deploy-to-test and expand the logs, you can follow the links to Bytebase.

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Self-hosted GitLab Considerations

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Use bytebase-action in an Offline GitLab Runner

If you are self-hosting GitLab in an internal network that has no access to the public internet, your CI/CD jobs may fail with the following error: Job failed: failed to pull image "bytebase/bytebase-action:latest". Since the image cannot be pulled directly from Docker Hub, you’ll need to download it from an external machine, then transfer and load it into your internal environment manually.

1. On an external (internet-accessible) machine:

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   docker pull bytebase/bytebase-action:latest
   docker save -o bytebase-action.tar bytebase/bytebase-action:latest
   

2. Transfer the bytebase-action.tar file to your internal server. Use scp, USB drive, or any method suitable for your setup.

3. On your internal (offline) machine:

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   docker load -i bytebase-action.tar
   docker tag bytebase/bytebase-action:latest bytebase/bytebase-action:latest
   

   Note: docker tag step is only needed if the loaded image doesn’t already have the correct tag.

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Resolve GitLab Clone Redirect in Internal Network

If your GitLab instance uses an external URL but is hosted in an internal network, bytebase-action may fail with:

fatal: unable to update url base from redirection

This happens because GitLab redirects to the external URL, which isn’t accessible internally.

To resolve this, set the clone_url in your GitLab Runner configuration to point to the internal GitLab address:

[[runners]]
  clone_url = "http://your.internal.gitlab"

This forces the runner to clone from the internal URL and avoids redirection errors.

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Summary

Now you have learned how to database GitOps with GitLab CI. If you want to trigger a release creation with other git providers (e.g. GitHub, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps), you may customize the workflow file.