Deprecate and end of support pipeline subscriptions

Release notes

Pipeline subscriptions are used to connect pipelines and trigger actions in upstream projects. These behaviors are less reliable than using downstream pipelines with the trigger keyword . Therefore, to improve maintenance and usability, we are removing ending support for pipeline subscriptions in 18.0.

Overview

Pipeline subscriptions are underutilized and heavy to maintain GitLab feature. In 17.6, we are announcing the intent to end of support Pipeline Subscriptions in the next major release, %18.0 and scheduled for removal in %19.0

What should you use instead of pipeline subscriptions?

Option 1: Use CI/CD jobs with pipeline trigger tokens to trigger pipelines when another pipeline runs. This method is more reliable and flexible than pipeline subscriptions.

Option 2: Please see a prototype example here (https://gitlab.com/gl-demo-ultimate-mgrabowski/pipeline-subscription) that doesn't require modifying the subscribed repo. The README has additional details.