Gitlab pipeline skips the stage, when previous stage fails

Question

my Gitlab pipeline consists of several stages. The second to last stage tests and the last stage does cleanup. The last stage must always be executed even if the tests fail. The pipeline starts when a merge request is created and the target is the main branch. The pipeline has to be successful otherwise the developer is not able to merge. Unfortunately, the pipeline aborts and does not run the last stage, if the tests fail. "allow_failure" is not an option. If the test stage fails, the pipeline is succcessful, so that the developer is able to merge the branch. Can anyone give me a tip on this?

#other stages
...
myTests:
  stage: test
  rules:
    - if: '$CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event" && $CI_MERGE_REQUEST_TARGET_BRANCH_NAME == "main"'
  script:
    - ...# Do some tests
  tags:
    - bla

myCleaner:
  stage: clean
  script:
    - ... //delete everything
  tags:
    - bla
  rules:
    - if: '$CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event" && $CI_MERGE_REQUEST_TARGET_BRANCH_NAME == "main"'
    - when: always

Answer 1

I'd merge the test and cleanup jobs this way (untested):

# other stages
...
myTests:
  stage: test
  rules:
    - if: '$CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event" && $CI_MERGE_REQUEST_TARGET_BRANCH_NAME == "main"'
  script:
    - ./run_tests || retcode=$?  # Do some tests
    - ... # delete everything
    - [ -n "$retcode" ] && false # "false" or "exit 1"
  tags:
    - bla