The issue opens pre-filled with this page title and URL.
This page says how to prove what you can do with GitLab CI/CD. The course
shows four levels, and a level without a finish line is only a shelf of
lessons. All four now have their exam: four challenges without hints,
one per level, described here with their exact identifier. The level C3 capstone remains a
guided lab: it prepares the C3 exam without replacing it.
What you will learn
Spot the exam that closes each of the four levels
Understand what the grade measures: the state of the forge, not the commands
Start an exam on the labs virtual machine
Tell an exam (no hints) from a guided lab
How are the exams graded?
Each exam is a lab of the gitlab-ci-dsoxlab-training catalogue, of type
challenge, and it names no defect. The grade is taken on the state of
the forge, read through the GitLab API: pipelines, jobs, environments,
registry, locks. The commands you type do not count; what counts is what the
forge says once your work is done.
A failure describes the broken promise and its consequence, never the
line to write. The labs run on a virtual machine named gitlab-1.lab, which
dsoxlab provision prepares with GitLab CE and its runner: no fork on
gitlab.com, so neither a minute quota nor an identity verification. Installing
the tool is described in the DSOXLab documentation.
An exam starts like any other lab: dsoxlab run <identifier>, once the
virtual machine is ready. The block shown under each level gives the exact
identifier. Take the exam at the end of its level, once you have played its
lessons and its labs: it requires nothing else.
Which exam for which level?
Each level closes on a measurement, and they read in order: you write a
pipeline, you deliver with it, you industrialise it, then you audit
it.
Level
What you can claim
The exam that proves it
C1, write a pipeline and read its failures
My green pipeline tells the truth
A pipeline that tells the truth (60 min)
C2, deliver
What I ship leaves a trace
A delivery you can trace (60 min)
C3, industrialise
My pipeline is industrialised and absorbs a transient failure
A pipeline to industrialise (70 min)
C4, secure and tool
I can audit a pipeline
A pipeline you can audit (75 min)
Swipe to see more
Level C1: a pipeline that tells the truth
The starting pipeline is green, and it lies: it reports success on
promises it does not keep. Four defects hide in it, and none of them is
named to you, not even here: finding them is part of the exam. It is up to you
to read the chain again and make its promises honest. The grade reads the
state of the forge, never your commands. Allow one hour.
Level C2: a delivery you can trace
The chain claims to deliver and leaves no usable trace: neither in what
your forge knows of your deployments, nor in what actually comes out of it.
Four defects again, and none of them is named to you. The level C2
lessons and the labs they carry prepare these moves; pointing at them one by
one would hand you the answer.
Level C3: a pipeline to industrialise
The starting pipeline is green on the surface and yet poorly industrialised:
five defects, and none of them is named to you. They belong to what level C3
teaches, duplication, duration, modularity and reliability, but locating them is
your job. Eight tests read the state of the forge through the API, never
the commands you typed.
A transient failure is injected during the exam, and it is deliberate:
do not mistake it for a broken machine. Catching it without hiding real
regressions is part of the grade. Allow a little over an hour.
The capstone, rebuild the whole pipeline,
is not this exam: it is a guided lab, with three paid hints and
verification commands in its brief. It prepares the level, it does not close
it.
Level C4: a pipeline you can audit
The Secure and tool level closes on an audit exam: it has no hints,
like the other three, and requires nothing from Premium, so nothing that a
GitLab CE instance cannot do. You review a pipeline through an auditor's eyes,
with no defect pointed out to you. The grade, here too, is taken on the state
of the forge and not on your commands.
The seven labs of the securiser section of the catalogue are attested:
each one has been played and its verdict is VALIDE. The lessons of
the security section remain the
material to play before the exam. Allow a little over an hour.
What remains imperfect
A validation page that hid its limits would help nobody. The four exams are
played and attested on the reference virtual machine, but they only measure
what a self-hosted GitLab CE instance lets you read: neither Premium
features nor gitlab.com are assessed. And the identifier gl-ep3 closes C4
while gl-ep4 closes C3: the numbers follow the order of writing, not the order
of the levels.
Key takeaways
All four levels have an exam, from C1 to C4.
They are challenges without hints: the defects are not named.
The grade reads the state of the forge through the GitLab API, never the
commands you typed.
The C3 capstone remains a guided lab: it prepares the C3 exam (gl-ep4), it does
not replace it.
The labs run on the gitlab-1.lab virtual machine, prepared by
dsoxlab provision.