Build flexible CI/CD pipelines with custom Pipes

This blog is part of 12 days of CI/CD, a celebration of all things CI/CD. Click here for more content and stay up to date by following us on Twitter!

Built to support any workflow or tool that you use, Bitbucket Pipes makes it easy to build and automate a CI/CD pipeline that meets your exact needs. With over supported 50 pipes available that let you test, deploy, scan, or manage artifacts with many of the industry's leading vendors, it's trivial to set up the external services your team uses across your pipelines and repositories. Best of all, these supported pipes are updated and maintained by the author meaning you never have to worry about updating or re-configuring them yourself.

But there's no one-size-fits-all approach to software development and developers have their own preferences in terms of how they build software and the tools they want to use. As such we've made it easy to create your own custom pipes, allowing teams the freedom to automate and integrate their CI/CD pipeline to meet their specific needs and requirements.

Creating a custom pipe

Creating a custom pipe simplifies the configuration of your CI/CD pipeline and makes re-use easy and efficient. A custom pipe would be useful in situations where:

  • The same action is performed in several steps of your pipeline
  • Similar tasks are run in multiple repositories
  • An action being performed needs dependencies that your main pipeline doesn’t have
  • Connecting with an external service to make it easier to use in pipelines

There are two types of custom pipes you can create – simple or complete. Both have their pros and cons and provide additional flexibility for teams depending on their needs and use cases. Full instructions on how to create a custom pipe can be found here, and below are guides and examples of custom pipes you can learn and gain inspiration from:

Share your custom pipe and win!

In the spirit of giving this holiday season we want you to tell us about the custom pipes you've built! Simply head to the Atlassian Community and share your pipe repository with us, as well as a description of what it does and how it helps your CI/CD workflow. You have until 29 February, 2020 to share your custom pipe with us and we'll randomly choose a few submissions to win a limited edition Bitbucket bomber jacket.

Best of luck!