Copying a war file from GitLab CI to Tomcat - dockerfile

Question

I am trying to create a CI/CD pipeline to build war file and deploy it to Tomcat Container from GitLab.
I am using a Maven image to build the project. Once the war file is created, I would like to copy it to some folder so that from there it can be copied to the tomcat server, in a container, webapps directory.
My current approach and goal is to use a Dockerfile in my project. From a Tomcat image, run Tomcat using the project war. I tried using ADD in the Dockerfile but the directory paths where the war resides, $CI_PROJECT_DIR, is not where the Dockerfile is looking.
The following is the ".gitlab-ci.yml" file.
stages:
# Build project
- build
- package
# Build and deploy mailService
#- deploy
variables:
# Variables that can be used throughout the pipeline are defined here.
# Maven variables
MAVEN_CLI_OPTS: '-s /appdir/.m2/settings.xml'
MAVEN_PATH: '/appdir/opt/apache-maven-3.8.4/bin'
IMAGE_PATH: 'gitlab-registry.gs.mil/gteam-development/docker'
project-build:
image: ${IMAGE_PATH}/maven
services:
- tomcat:latest
stage: build
script:
- ${MAVEN_PATH}/mvn ${MAVEN_CLI_OPTS} clean package
- ls -als
- ls -als target
build docker image:
stage: package
image: docker
services:
- docker:dind
script:
- echo $CI_REGISTRY_PASSWORD | docker login -u $CI_REGISTRY_USER $CI_REGISTRY --password-stdin
- docker build -t $CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE .
- docker push $CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE
tags:
- dind
The following is the "Dockerfile" I am using to run Tomcat using the image. I need to copy my war file to the Tomcat webapps folder and build another image.
FROM tomcat:latest
LABEL maintainer=”Jacquelyne Wilson”
# ADD $CI_PROJECT/target/geoint-rfi-data-api.war /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/
EXPOSE 8080
CMD [“catalina.sh”, “run”]
NOTE: These images I have in our Gitlab Container Registry. Hope this is enough information.
This is my first experience creating Gitlab CI pipeline. My apologies if my terms and approach is not ideal.

Answer 1

You can provide the WAR file built in your project-build job as an artifact, so it is available in the following job. By the way, you should probably not use spaces in the job name.
This could look like the following:
project-build:
image: ${IMAGE_PATH}/maven
services:
- tomcat:latest
stage: build
artifacts:
paths:
- /path/to/your/war
script:
- ${MAVEN_PATH}/mvn ${MAVEN_CLI_OPTS} clean package
- ls -als
- ls -als target
And in the docker build job, you can then copy the WAR file from the artifact to the docker build context path so it can be ADDed to your image.
Hope this helps :)
Best regards
Andreas