When I set an artifact to /var/lib/docker in a build job's properties, it's changed to a relative path
Unable to publish artifact [Docker Cache]: the source directory /home/bamboo/bamboo-agent-home/xml-data/build-dir/BB-THING-JOB1/var/lib/docker does not exist.
Never in any application should a path that starts with / be changed to a relative path. It specifically breaks making artifacts from global operating system cached files, and it also breaks reasonable expectations for relative files in a POSIX environment.
I was able to get the artifact published with a six ../ in a row, by changing the artifact path to: ../../../../../../var/lib/docker:
Publishing an artifact: Docker Cache
Finished publishing of artifact Shared artifact: [Docker Cache], pattern: [**/*] anchored at: [../../../../../../var/lib/docker] in 5s
Finalising the build...
However the problem surfaces later during deployment:
Preparing to download plan result BE-CORE-35 artifact: Shared artifact: [Docker Cache], pattern: [**/*] anchored at: [../../../../../../var/lib/docker]
Unable to download artifact Shared artifact: [Docker Cache], pattern: [**/*] anchored at: [../../../../../../var/lib/docker]
Because of this bug, I don't see a way to use artifacts that are outside of the build directory unless they're manually moved inside it.
Workaround
- create a symbolic link to an external path inside your build directory.
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I'm sorry but after looking into our logs again, it's a problem of the shell task (when ran from an absolute path) and not the artifacts definitions.
The shell cwd is defined via a Bamboo var ```${bamboo.ourproject.SOME_PATH}```. Note that the absolute path still falls within the Bamboo working directory, it's just an abs path since it gets generated by a bash script.