Persist `needs:` validation as config error

In case when `needs:` is missing, but when requested by service,
we would not save the pipeline with config_error.

This makes it explicit that we want to persist the error
as `config_error` failure reason.

2 files changed, 7 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/lib/gitlab/ci/pipeline/chain/helpers.rb b/lib/gitlab/ci/pipeline/chain/helpers.rb
index 6bb3a75291b..8ccb1066575 100644
--- a/lib/gitlab/ci/pipeline/chain/helpers.rb
+++ b/lib/gitlab/ci/pipeline/chain/helpers.rb
@@ -5,7 +5,12 @@ module Gitlab
     module Pipeline
       module Chain
         module Helpers
-          def error(message)
+          def error(message, config_error: false)
+            if config_error && command.save_incompleted
+              pipeline.yaml_errors = message
+              pipeline.drop!(:config_error)
+            end
+
             pipeline.errors.add(:base, message)
           end
         end
diff --git a/lib/gitlab/ci/pipeline/chain/populate.rb b/lib/gitlab/ci/pipeline/chain/populate.rb
index 65029f5ce7f..13eca5a9d28 100644
--- a/lib/gitlab/ci/pipeline/chain/populate.rb
+++ b/lib/gitlab/ci/pipeline/chain/populate.rb
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ module Gitlab
             # Gather all runtime build/stage errors
             #
             if seeds_errors = pipeline.stage_seeds.flat_map(&:errors).compact.presence
-              return error(seeds_errors.join("\n"))
+              return error(seeds_errors.join("\n"), config_error: true)
             end
 
             ##