# Setting up a CI/ CD pipeline with GitLab: Quality, Test and Report

DevFeed: [Setting up a CI/ CD pipeline with GitLab: Quality, Test and Report](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/setting-up-a-ci-cd-pipeline-with-gitlab-quality-test-and-report-22424.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.tjmaher.com/2026/08/setting-up-ci-cd-pipeline-with-gitlab.html>)

Author: T.J. Maher (noreply@blogger.com)

Published: 2026-08-25T02:28:52Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [T.J. Maher](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/t-j-maher.md>)

Topics: [CI/CD Pipeline](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ci-cd-pipeline.md>), [GitLab](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/gitlab.md>), [Testing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/testing.md>), [Playwright](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/playwright.md>), [pull-requests](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/pull-requests.md>), [TypeScript](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/typescript.md>)

Tags: [bun-create-playwright](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/bun-create-playwright.md>), [ci-cd](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ci-cd.md>), [ci-cd-pipeline](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ci-cd-pipeline.md>), [code-reviews](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code-reviews.md>), [gitlab](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/gitlab.md>), [playwright](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/playwright.md>), [test](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/test.md>), [testing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/testing.md>), [typescript](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/typescript.md>), [workflows](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/workflows.md>)

## AI overview

A tutorial on setting up a three-stage GitLab CI/CD pipeline for merge requests. The pipeline runs code-quality checks, smoke and regression tests, and produces a downloadable report, with stages executed sequentially and jobs within each stage running in parallel.

## Source excerpt

So far, we have reviewed how to review code with ES Lint + Prettier and Typecheck, how to set up and run smoke tests, how to run all Playwright + TypeScript tests, and reviewed the HTML report of results. In this post, we are going to set up a three stage GitLab CI/ CD pipeline that will run against every merge request: Quality (lint, typecheck, prettier) --> Test ( smoke + regression ) --> Report ( Downloadable ) I haven't used GitLab since when I worked at ThreatStack back in 2020. ( See my blog entry Getting to Know GitLab and How They Test the UI ) GitLab reads .gitlab-ci.yml from the repository root and turns it into a pipeline, a set of jobs, grouped into stages, running whenever you push a change to a repository. Stages run one after another, and jobs within a stage run in parallel. If one stage fails, the stages after it are skipped. This begs the question: What is GitLab? What is CI/ CD? Or a pipeline? Or a merge request? What is GitLab? GitLab began in 2011 as a side project by Ukrainian programmer Dmytro Zaporozhets, built to help developers work together on code more easily. Over time, it grew into a large open-source DevOps platform. More than just storing code, it handles code reviews, CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous delivery), and package registries. A company called GitLab Inc. was eventually created to turn the project into a commercial product. What makes GitLab different from tools that only host Git repositories (like a basic Git server) is that it bundles the entire software delivery process into one application. This includes: Merge requests - GitLab's term for proposing and reviewing code changes before they're merged into the main codebase (similar to a "pull request" in GitHub) Issue tracking - a built-in system for logging bugs, tasks, and feature requests Pipelines - automated workflows that build, test, and deploy code whenever changes are pushed So instead of stitching together separate tools for version control, testing, an