What are parent-child pipelines in GitLab CI/CD?

Parent-child pipelines (also called dynamic pipelines) allow a job in one pipeline (the parent) to dynamically generate and trigger another pipeline (the child). This enables modular, scalable pipelines for monorepos and complex projects.

# Parent pipeline (.gitlab-ci.yml):
stages:
  - generate
  - trigger

generate-child-config:
  stage: generate
  script:
    - generate-pipeline-config.sh > child-pipeline.yml  # dynamic YAML
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - child-pipeline.yml

trigger-child:
  stage: trigger
  trigger:
    include:
      - artifact: child-pipeline.yml
        job: generate-child-config
    strategy: depend              # wait for child to complete

# Or trigger from a static file:
trigger-static-child:
  trigger:
    include:
      - local: ci/child-pipeline.yml
    strategy: depend

# Child pipeline (ci/child-pipeline.yml):
stages:
  - build
  - test
build-child:
  stage: build
  script: echo "Child pipeline building..."

Common monorepo use case: a parent pipeline detects which subdirectories changed, then triggers separate child pipelines for only those services - avoiding running every service's tests on every push.

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