CI/CD Integration

Overview

Boilerplate is designed to work well in automated pipelines. The --non-interactive flag ensures all variables are provided explicitly, making builds reproducible and deterministic.

Non-Interactive Mode

In CI/CD, always use --non-interactive to prevent Boilerplate from waiting for user input:

boilerplate \
  --template-url ./templates/deploy \
  --output-folder ./generated \
  --non-interactive \
  --var-file vars/production.yml \
  --var Version="${CI_COMMIT_TAG}"

In this mode:

• All variables must have a value from --var, --var-file, environment variables, or defaults
• Missing variables cause an immediate error (no prompts)
• Hooks are auto-approved
• Dependencies are auto-included

Variable Files per Environment

A common pattern is to maintain variable files for each environment:

vars/
├── common.yml
├── dev.yml
├── staging.yml
└── production.yml

boilerplate \
  --template-url ./templates/infra \
  --output-folder ./generated \
  --non-interactive \
  --var-file vars/common.yml \
  --var-file "vars/${ENVIRONMENT}.yml"

Later --var-file values override earlier ones, so environment-specific values override common defaults.

Environment Variables

Boilerplate checks for environment variables in the format BOILERPLATE_VAR_<NAME>:

export BOILERPLATE_VAR_DatabaseHost="db.example.com"
export BOILERPLATE_VAR_ApiKey="secret123"

boilerplate \
  --template-url ./templates/config \
  --output-folder ./generated \
  --non-interactive

GitHub Actions Example

jobs:
  generate:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Install Boilerplate
        run: |
          curl -Lo boilerplate https://github.com/gruntwork-io/boilerplate/releases/latest/download/boilerplate_linux_amd64
          chmod +x boilerplate
          sudo mv boilerplate /usr/local/bin/

      - name: Generate Configuration
        run: |
          boilerplate \
            --template-url ./templates/deploy \
            --output-folder ./generated \
            --non-interactive \
            --var-file vars/production.yml \
            --var Version="${{ github.ref_name }}"

Disabling Hooks and Shell

For security in CI/CD, you may want to disable hooks or shell execution:

# Skip all hooks
boilerplate --no-hooks ...

# Disable shell helper (returns "replace-me" instead of executing)
boilerplate --no-shell ...