Testing in Gitlab CI/CD with different dependacies versions

Question

I'm currently developing a (Laravel) package on Gitlab, and i want to automate testing using its CI/CD pipeline.

The problem

I already know ho to set up a pipeline in Gitlab, but what i want to achieve is to automate testing against different versions of the same dependancy, in order to keep checking compatibility with old version and add checking with upcoming new ones.

The case

My Laravel package is not so complex right now and don't use some particular nor specific Laravel features, so i would like to keep it compatible with te more versions of laravel possible: i would trigger different testing stages in my pipeline to run my tests against laravel 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, 6, 7, and 8.

The question

How do i trigger different testing stages using different laravel/framework versions?
When downloading dependancies composer will go for the latest version available if i define it with '^', so which files do i have to edit?

@CptDayDreamer no, not a proper solution, but some toughts i'll share with an answer asap, just need to check some things before writing it — fudo, Feb 17 '21 at 07:56

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 17 '21 at 08:31

Ok, i've analyzed the problem a bit more, and made some considerations about it.

I'm writing not to properly answer my question, since i hope someone will eventually came up with a better solution/idea, but to just share some toughts with everyone is facing the same problem.

First: since i'm developing a package for Laravel i cannot declare laravel as dependancy for it, production nor develop, it is my laravel project that need to declare my package as a dependancy.

Second: to test my package compatibility with laravel i'm using orchestra/testbench as a dev-dependancy, and as for its documentation every release target a single and precise Laravel version, so if i want to test my package against different Laravel version i need to test it with different orchestra/testbench releases.

Third: the only dependancy my package has is just php 7.3, so i can easily test against this and subsequent version using Gitlab pipeline and creating a job for each php version that use a docker image with the correct php version and the last composer one.

Conclusion

It is not trivial nor straight to test a Laravel package against different Laravel version.

The only idea i came up with, but not tried since i gave it up aj just test php versions (for now) is to make a branch for each Laravel version i want to test with and update its composer.json dev-dependancy with the correct orchestra/testbench release.

Than i can execute php tests on my features branch merge request, and in case of success merge the develop branch on each "laravel branch" and execute on those the laravel compatibility test.

At last, if every laravel branch pass its tests, or at least the ones i decide to keep deevelopment/support active for, i can merge the develop branch on the master.

I'm not goig for it

I decided to avoid all of this since i'm not quite sure on how implement all of this on the pipeline, and i strongly think that it just adds mantainence burden to this project.

So i just keep the php jobs to check against different php versions, this way i just need to copy/paste a job definition in my gitlab-cy.yml file and change the docker image version accordingly to the new php version to test against.