Set a Variable in Concourse Pipeline

Question

I would like to run a command in my pipeline and then save the result in a variable to be used later on in the pipeline. The command I want to run is

gh release view | head -n 1 | cut -f 1

I can log into Github and everything else, so that is not a problem. My only issue is saving the result to a variable and using that variable.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

Unfortunately not. You must write the contents of the variable to file and use inputs and outputs to communicate between tasks. If you need to use the output between jobs, you'll also need a resource as described in the excerpt from https://docs.concourse.farm/power-tutorial/00-core-concepts

When inputs are passed between steps within a job they can remain just that: inputs/outputs. For passing inputs/outputs between jobs, you must use resources. A resource is an input/output set whose state is retrieved/stored externally by a job, e.g. a git repo or an S3 object.

Of course, once a task receives an input from the previous task, it can then be read into a variable.