clab destroy fails when clab folder isn't present

[marion-qacafe]

When the folder created by clab for a topology (clab-) is no longer there, clab destroy fails. I have worked around this by creating an empty folder with the expected name. Then, clab destroy succeeds. Since the folder I create is empty, does it really need to exist for clab destroy to work?

I am using containerlab in a CI/CD gitlab runner, which is why directories get destroyed before the clab is destroyed.

Directory not present:

Cleaning up JobID 9310129195
Destroying Clab
11:47:25 INFO Parsing & checking topology file=prplos.clab.yml
11:47:25 INFO Parsing & checking topology file=prplos.clab.yml
Error: folder /root/gitlab-runner/builds/t3_oo6825/1/qacafe/cdrouter/nightly-tests/prplos/clab-9310129195 does not exist or is not accessible

Empty directory created:

mkdir /root/gitlab-runner/builds/t3_oo6825/1/qacafe/cdrouter/nightly-tests/prplos/clab-9310129195
Cleaning up JobID 9310129195
Destroying Clab
11:47:37 INFO Parsing & checking topology file=prplos.clab.yml
11:47:37 INFO Parsing & checking topology file=prplos.clab.yml
11:47:37 INFO Destroying lab name=9310129195
11:47:37 INFO Removed container name=clab-9310129195-cdrouter.py
11:47:39 INFO Removed container name=clab-9310129195-cdrouter
11:47:39 INFO Removing host entries path=/etc/hosts
11:47:39 INFO Removing SSH config path=/etc/ssh/ssh_config.d/clab-9310129195.conf

[SanderDelden]

Perhaps this can be resolved by retrieving the clab- folder from the previous stage by leveraging the dependencies functionality in Gitlab: https://docs.gitlab.com/ci/yaml/#dependencies

Quick example:

deploy-containerlab:
  stage: deploy
  script: containerlab deploy
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - clab-<lab_name>/

destroy-containerlab:
  stage: destroy
  script: containerlab destroy
  dependencies:
    - deploy-containerlab

[marion-qacafe]

Perhaps this can be resolved by retrieving the clab- folder from the previous stage by leveraging the dependencies functionality in Gitlab: https://docs.gitlab.com/ci/yaml/#dependencies

Quick example:

deploy-containerlab:
stage: deploy
script: containerlab deploy
artifacts:
paths:
- clab-<lab_name>/

destroy-containerlab:
stage: destroy
script: containerlab destroy
dependencies:
- deploy-containerlab

Thanks for the suggestion. Currently, gitlab isn't handling the cleanup of the clab instances, but I may be able to use this workaround in the future.

[hellt]

Yes, I think we should solve it gracefully. There are no hard dependencies on the contents of the lab dir that as far as I remember