What are stages in GitLab CI/CD and how do you define them?

Stages control the order of execution in a pipeline. Jobs within the same stage run in parallel; stages themselves run sequentially. If any job in a stage fails, subsequent stages are not run (unless configured otherwise).

# Define stages at the top level of .gitlab-ci.yml
stages:
  - build
  - test
  - deploy

# Jobs reference their stage with the "stage" keyword
build-job:
  stage: build
  script:
    - echo "Building..."

test-unit:
  stage: test
  script:
    - echo "Running unit tests..."

test-integration:
  stage: test       # also in "test" stage - runs PARALLEL to test-unit
  script:
    - echo "Running integration tests..."

deploy-job:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - echo "Deploying..."

Default stages: GitLab provides default stages if you do not define a stages block. The built-in defaults are: .pre, build, test, deploy, .post. The special .pre stage always runs first (before any other stages) and .post always runs last.

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