Prepopulate the pipeline editor with a 3 stage template

Release note

Previously whenever a user opens up their pipeline editor in order to start writing a CI/CD pipeline they would see an empty blank page, In this release, we've preloaded the editor with a basic 3 stage template so whenever you open up our editor you will see it right away. The template has lots of helpful tips and hints commented out in yaml to make customization of the template easier and explain the syntax in the context of the syntax as much as possible.

Problem

CI 1st time experience provides no guidance on what is GitLab CI, how it works and how to set it up. A blank file is intimidating for those who don't know how CI works and how to write the yaml configuration. Most 1st time users find the experience for setting up CI difficult, which is slowing down CI adoption

Proposal

Let's pre-populate the editor so instead of an empty blank page users would see the following template

# This is a sample GitLab CI/CD configuration file that should run without
# any modifications. It demonstrates a basic 3 stage CI/CD pipeline.
# Instead of real tests or scripts, it uses echo commands to simulate
# the pipeline execution.
#
# A pipeline is composed of independent jobs that run scripts, grouped into stages.
# Stages run in sequential order, but jobs within stages run in parallel.
#
# For more information, see: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/README.html#stages

stages:          # List of stages for jobs, and their order of execution
  - build
  - test
  - deploy

build-job:       # This job runs in the build stage, which runs first.
  stage: build
  script:
    - echo "Compiling the code..."
    - echo "Compile complete.

unit-test-job:   # This job runs in the test stage.
  stage: test    # It only starts when the job in the build stage completes successfully.
  script:
    - echo "Running unit tests..."
    - echo "Code coverage is 90%"

lint-test-job:   # This job also runs in the test stage.
  stage: test    # It can run at the same time as unit-test-job (in parallel).
  script:
    - echo "Linting code..."
    - echo "No lint issues found."

deploy-job:      # This job runs in the deploy stage.
  stage: deploy  # It only runs when *both* jobs in the test stage complete successfully.
  script:
    - echo "Deploying application..."
    - echo "Application successfully deployed."

Availability & Testing