---
layout: handbook-page-toc
title: "Tips and Tricks"
---

## On this page
{:.no_toc .hidden-md .hidden-lg}

- TOC
{:toc .hidden-md .hidden-lg}

### Overview

This page lists a number of tips and tricks we have found useful in day to day Quality Engineering related
tasks. 
  
#### Running Gitlab-QA pipeline against a specific GitLab release

While working on the [GitLab-QA codebase](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-qa), it is sometimes helpful to run the GitLab-QA pipeline
against a specific release of the [GitLab project](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab). This could be 
due reasons such as that particular GitLab release containing specific code needed for validating the changes made 
in Gitlab-QA. To run a [GitLab-QA pipeline](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-qa/pipelines) against 
a specific GitLab release, we need to know the GitLab release version created and tagged by the omnibus pipeline. 
This can be found by either observing the `RELEASE` variable in any of the `package-and-qa` test jobs or 
in the last output line of the `Trigger:gitlab-docker` job triggered by the `package-and-qa` job. Here is an example of what the `RELEASE` string
looks like:

```bash
registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/gitlab-ee:41b42271ff37bf79066ef3089432ee28cfd81d8c
```

Copy this string and create a new [GitLab-QA pipeline](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-qa/pipelines)
 with a `RELEASE` variable and use the copied string as its value. Run the pipeline against the branch that 
 has your changes.

#### Determine the version, revision, branch and package deployed in GitLab environments:

To find out the version, revision, branch and package deployed in gitlab.com, staging and canary environments,
run this in the #chat-ops-test Slack channel:

```bash
/chatops run auto_deploy status
```

![ChatopsAutoDeployStatus.png](ChatopsAutoDeployStatus.png)

You will [need access to the https://ops.gitlab.net/gitlab-com/chatops](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/chatops_on_gitlabcom.html#requesting-access) project to run `/chatops` commands.
Ask to be added to this project in the #development Slack channel.

#### Determine if a change has been deployed to an environment using revision SHA

If you have a revision SHA that is deployed on an environment, you can find out if a change has made it to that environment.
For example, if the revision SHA deployed on an environment is `c46489109e4` and you want to find out if a change in
`restrict_by_ip_address_spec.rb` has made it there, you can use:

```bash
git show c46489109e4:qa/qa/specs/features/ee/browser_ui/1_manage/group/restrict_by_ip_address_spec.rb
```

You can determine the revision SHA deployed on a GitLab instance by either navigating to www.example.com/help,
by calling the `http://www.example.com/api/v4/version` API or by running `/chatops run auto_deploy status` in a Slack
channel such as #chat-ops-test.

You can also determine if your commit has been deployed on a GitLab environment using [ChatOps](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/chatops).
For example, if your commit ref is `347e530c5b3dec60c0ce2870bc79ca4c8273604d` you can run this command in a Slack
channel such as #chat-ops-test:

```bash
/chatops run auto_deploy status 347e530c5b3dec60c0ce2870bc79ca4c8273604d
```