Passing Project Names as Parameters to PowerShell in GitLab Pipelines

When building CI pipelines in GitLab for multiple projects, you often need to pass a list of project names to a script. However, GitLab CI doesn’t support arrays as environment variables. The best solution is to pass the values as a comma-separated string and split them inside your PowerShell script. This method is clean, compatible, and easy to maintain.

Implementation

Step 1: Define the project list as a CSV string in .gitlab-ci.yml

variables:
  PROJECT_NAMES: "ProjectA,ProjectB,ProjectC"

Step 2: Pass it as a parameter to the PowerShell script

script:
  - powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\Create-Pipeline.ps1 -projectNamesRaw "$env:PROJECT_NAMES"

Step 3: Process the string inside the PowerShell script

param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory)]
    [string]$projectNamesRaw
)

# Split and trim project names into an array
$projectNames = $projectNamesRaw -split ',' | ForEach-Object { $_.Trim() }

foreach ($projectName in $projectNames) {
    Write-Output "Processing project: $projectName"
    # Your logic here
}

Why This Works

• GitLab treats all variables as strings, so this approach avoids format issues
• -split creates an array inside PowerShell
• Trim() ensures clean names even with extra spaces