Clean up after canceling a task

When you have jobs that take a long time to run, it is very useful to have the capability to cancel it when you already know it will fail.

By default, GoCD will kill any currently running tasks . There are two other alternatives to this behaviour

• Specify a task to clean up your environment. This could kill the processes and cleanup any existing state.
• Indicate to GoCD you do not want anything done. This will allow the task to finish executing so the agent does not get into an inconsistent state.

Using web interface

To perform a custom cleanup through the web interface, edit the desired task configuration and check the On Cancel Task checkbox in Advanced Options

Using XML configuration

Example: Override task to perform custom cleanup

Usage: As a developer, I want to stop running my Twist tests and clean up the environment on each job when I cancel the stage.

• On the Admin > Pipelines tab, edit the jobs that should handle canceling correctly
• Ensure the following “task” block is in the job configuration
• Now, whenever you cancel the stage while the jobs are running the ant “twist” target, the target “kill_twist” will execute

Example: Override task to disable all cleanup

Usage: As a developer, I want to allow my database tests to not be halted when I cancel the stage.

• On the Admin > Pipelines tab, edit the jobs that should handle canceling correctly
• Ensure the following “task” block is in the job configuration
• Now, whenever you cancel the stage while the jobs are running the rake “db-test” target, the agent will finish the task before picking up new work