Mosquitto: 5. GitLab CI

This documentation is part of the GitHub Actions & GitLab CI guide. View the full guide here: Spin up a real Mosquitto service from your GitHub Actions or GitLab CI pipeline, run your tests against it, and tear it down automatically.

👋 Welcome to the Stackhero documentation!

Stackhero gives you a fully managed Mosquitto MQTT cloud environment designed for reliability and flexibility:

• Unlimited message throughput and data transfers, so your workflows never hit artificial limits.
• Unlimited device authentication through your own external API, making onboarding and access management seamless.
• Advanced ACLs for fine-grained control over topics, users, and actions.
• A custom domain name with built-in HTTPS for secure, branded endpoints (for example: https://mqtt.your-company.com).
• Zero-hassle updates: apply improvements or security patches with a single click.
• Consistent performance and strong security, with every instance running on a private, dedicated infrastructure.

Accelerate your IoT projects and reduce operational overhead. You can have a secure, production-ready Mosquitto MQTT cloud hosting instance up and running in just a few minutes.

You can save this configuration as .gitlab-ci.yml. With this setup, every pipeline run spins up a fresh real Mosquitto for your tests.

test:
  image: ubuntu:24.04
  variables:
    STACK_NAME: "ci-mosquitto-$CI_PIPELINE_ID-$CI_JOB_ID"
    INSTANCE: "200"   # Change this as needed (see step 3)
    REGION: "europe"
    SERVICE_STORE: "mosquitto"
  # STACKHERO_TOKEN comes from the CI/CD variable you created in step 1.
  script:
    - set -euo pipefail
    - curl -fsSL https://www.stackhero.io/install.sh | sh
    - apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends jq curl mosquitto-clients
    - STACK_ID=$(stackhero --format=script stack-create --name="$STACK_NAME")
    - echo "STACK_ID=$STACK_ID" >> deploy.env
    - SERVICE_ID=$(stackhero --format=script service-add --stack="$STACK_ID" --service-store="$SERVICE_STORE" --instance="$INSTANCE" --region="$REGION")
    - echo "SERVICE_ID=$SERVICE_ID" >> deploy.env
    - stackhero service-wait-for --service="$SERVICE_ID"
    - config=$(stackhero service-configuration-get --service="$SERVICE_ID" --format=json)
    - host=$(echo "$config" | jq -r '.configuration.domain')
user=$(echo "$config" | jq -r '.configuration.authenticationUsers[0].login')
password=$(echo "$config" | jq -r '.configuration.authenticationUsers[0].password')
    # Publish a test message to a topic.
    - mosquitto_pub -h "$host" -p 8883 -u "$user" -P "$password" --capath /etc/ssl/certs -t "stackhero/ci" -m "hello"
    - echo "✅ Mosquitto is reachable from CI."
    # You can run your own test suite here using the credentials above ...
  after_script:
    - test -f deploy.env && . ./deploy.env || true
    - >
      if [ -n "${SERVICE_ID:-}" ]; then
        stackhero service-delete --service="$SERVICE_ID" --confirm
        stackhero service-wait-for --service="$SERVICE_ID"
      fi
    - >
      if [ -n "${STACK_ID:-}" ]; then
        stackhero stack-delete --stack="$STACK_ID" --confirm
      fi

In GitLab, cleanup happens inside after_script. This section is always executed, even if the job fails, so your Mosquitto resources are removed and you are not charged for resources you are not using.

In GitLab, after_script runs in a fresh shell. To handle this, the script writes the service and stack IDs to deploy.env during the job and reloads them before teardown. This makes sure that even if something fails mid-job, your resources are still cleaned up.

That is the complete CI lifecycle for Mosquitto: create a stack, add the service, wait, retrieve credentials, smoke-test, and always tear down. Each pipeline run gets a real, isolated service, nothing left running when you are done. For more information about available commands and non-interactive STACKHERO_TOKEN authentication, you may want to explore the full CLI documentation.