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+# Building a package for testing
+
+While developing a new feature or modifying an existing one, it is helpful if an
+installable package (or a docker image) containing those changes is available
+for testing. For this very purpose, a manual job is provided in the GitLab CI/CD
+pipeline that can be used to trigger a pipeline in the omnibus-gitlab repository
+that will create
+1. A deb package for Ubuntu 16.04, available as a build artifact, and
+2. A docker image, which is pushed to [Omnibus GitLab's container 
+registry](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/container_registry)
+(images titled `gitlab-ce` and `gitlab-ee` respectively and image tag is the
+commit which triggered the pipeline).
+
+When you push a commit to either the gitlab-ce or gitlab-ee project, the
+pipeline for that commit will have a `build-package` manual action you can
+trigger.
+
+![Manual actions](img/trigger_ss1.png)
+
+![Build package manual action](img/trigger_ss2.png)
+
+## Specifying versions of components
+
+If you want to create a package from a specific branch, commit or tag of any of
+the GitLab components (like GitLab Workhorse, Gitaly, GitLab Pages, etc.), you
+can specify the branch name, commit sha or tag in the component's respective
+`*_VERSION` file. For example, if you want to build a package that uses the
+branch `0-1-stable`, modify the content of `GITALY_SERVER_VERSION` to
+`0-1-stable` and push the commit. This will create a manual job that can be
+used to trigger the build.
+
+## Specifying the branch in omnibus-gitlab repository
+
+In scenarios where a configuration change is to be introduced and omnibus-gitlab
+repository already has the necessary changes in a specific branch, you can build
+a package against that branch through an environment variable named
+`OMNIBUS_BRANCH`. To do this, specify that environment variable with the name of
+the branch as value in `.gitlab-ci.yml` and push a commit. This will create a
+manual job that can be used to trigger the build.