GitLab CICD Pipeline Jobs dependencies issue

Question

I have this Gitlab-ci.yml file

.react_cache:
  stage: cache
  image: registry.gitlab.com/path to my docker image
  script:
    - cd react-app
    - npm install -g yarn
    - yarn
    - yarn install --frozen-lockfile --no-progress
  cache:
    key:
      files:
        - react-app/yarn.lock

Playwright_Test:
  stage: test
  # only:
  #   changes:
  #     - "./react-app/**/*"
  image: registry.gitlab.com/path to my other docker image
  script:
    - cd laravel
    - cp .env.testing .env
    - composer install
    - php artisan key:generate
    - php artisan serve --port=80 &
    - cd ../react-app/
    - npx playwright install
    - npx playwright test ../react-app/tests/**/*.spec.ts
  services:
    - name: mcr.microsoft.com/playwright:bionic
      alias: playwright
  dependencies:
    - .react_cache

in above when the pipeline runs it gives this error

Playwright_Test job: undefined dependency: .react_cache

My other question is that when I use only change clause so it is supposed to be run when something is changed inside any folder of react but it doesn't run what am I doing wrong here

Thanks for help in advance

I tried above mentioned but didn't work

Answer 1

When a top-level key is prepended with a . -- that makes it a "hidden job" sometimes also called a 'template job' -- these do not actually run any jobs. You can only declare dependencies: on actual concrete jobs that do not start with a .

See also: GitLab CI caching examples - NodeJS. Your cache: configuration should be defined in the same job that intends to utilize the cache. See also: cache settings per-job.