What are GitLab CI/CD components and how do they differ from includes?

CI/CD components (introduced in GitLab 16.0) are a more structured, versioned, and discoverable way to share pipeline configuration across projects compared to simple include: project. They are published to the CI/CD catalog.

# Using a CI/CD component in .gitlab-ci.yml:
include:
  - component: $CI_SERVER_FQDN/myorg/my-components/deploy@1.0.0
    inputs:
      environment: production
      image_tag: $CI_COMMIT_SHORT_SHA

  # Use a specific version (tag), branch, or SHA:
  - component: gitlab.com/gitlab-org/ci-components/secret-detection@main

# Creating a component (in its own repository):
# File: templates/deploy.yml
---
spec:
  inputs:
    environment:
      description: "Deployment environment (staging or production)"
    image_tag:
      description: "Docker image tag to deploy"
      default: "latest"
---
deploy-$[[ inputs.environment ]]:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - ./deploy.sh $[[ inputs.environment ]] $[[ inputs.image_tag ]]

CI/CD components use the $[[ inputs.variable_name ]] syntax (double square brackets) to reference inputs, which is different from regular CI/CD variable syntax $VARIABLE.

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