Environment Variables¶

gitlab-compliance reads these environment variables when CLI flags are omitted.

Compliance / API checks¶

Variable	Used for	CLI override
`GITLAB_TOKEN`	GitLab API authentication	`--token`
`CI_JOB_TOKEN`	Fallback token in GitLab CI jobs	`--token`
`CI_PROJECT_PATH`	Default project for API scenarios	`--project`
`CI_SERVER_URL`	GitLab instance URL	`--gitlab-url`
`GITLAB_GROUP_PATH`	Group-scoped API scenarios	`--group`

A token alone is enough for include release checks against projects referenced in include: entries. Project and group settings still require --project or --group.

Example in CI (GitLab):

compliance:
  script:
    - pip install gitlab-compliance
    - gitlab-compliance check -f policies/ -p .gitlab-ci.yml --project
      $CI_PROJECT_PATH

Locally:

export GITLAB_TOKEN="glpat-..."
export CI_PROJECT_PATH="my-group/my-project"
gitlab-compliance check -f policies/ -p .gitlab-ci.yml

Token safety

Tokens are read from the environment only. Do not pass tokens through Behave userdata or commit them to policy files.

Strict mode¶

--strict is a CLI flag only (not an environment variable). It controls whether missing API connection info causes failures instead of skipped scenarios.

GitLab CI built-ins¶

In GitLab CI jobs, these variables are usually set automatically and work with --project $CI_PROJECT_PATH without extra configuration:

CI_JOB_TOKEN
CI_PROJECT_PATH
CI_SERVER_URL

See GitLab CI/CD integration for a full job example.