Jenkins: How to keep specific builds longer? - jenkins

I have a declarative pipeline that executes almost regularly.
Upon specific condition (evaluated during the job run) I'd like to keep the job longer than usual.
Usual runs I keep for one week.
If condition 1 is true I want to keep the build for up to a month.
If condition 2 is true, I want to keep the build for up to six months.
Can Jenkins do something like that out of the box, or can it do it by adding some plugin?

So I found a solution to this job: Jenkins out of the box cannot do what I was searching for. However Jenkins can run plugins. Not finding any plugin that would satisfy my need I started creating my own. Here are the highlevel steps if someone wanted to do the same:
follow the Jenkins Plugin development tutorial. From that you have a plugin with a build step and a build action
modify the build action to store the information about the two conditions, or even better the resulting keep period.
modify the build step so the information can be set from freestyle builds or pipeline steps.
create a BuildDiscarder that reads the information from the action and honors it before triggering a delete

Related

Add Promotion after jenkins pipeline

I know well Jenkins free-style jobs, but I'm new to pipelines.
I'm reworking some validation pipelines to add a manual step/pause before the final publication/diffusion step.
I've read about the input directive, but it's not what we want.
Our need is to be able to run the same pipeline several (10) times with different parameters, and afterwards, make a manual check on some or all the runs, eventually update some repports. Then go on with downstream operations (basically officially publish the reports, for QA team or others).
I used to do such things easily with free-style jobs, and manual promotions (restricted to authorized users). It's safe because all the build artefacts are saved at the end of the free-style job, and can be post-processed later.
Is there a way to achieve such thing in a pipeline ? (adding properties / promotions)
A key point for us is that the same pipeline job should be run several time, so each time the artefacts should be stored in a different location/workspace.
I used the input directive. It's expecting an interractive input.
If I launch the same job again, I'm afraid it will use the same workspace.
I added a free-style job, triggered after the pipeline job.
in this job, I retrieve the artefacts from the first job. The promotion does the job, but it's quite ugly implementation.
I tried to add a promotion using properties + promotions, but I'm not sure if I can do the same thing as a manual promotion in a free-style job. That's what I would like to do, to keep all things in the pipeline.
I have searched for some time, but I did not found much about it.
I have read some things like
https://issues.jenkins.io/browse/JENKINS-36089
or
https://www.jenkins.io/projects/gsoc/2019/artifact-promotion-plugin-for-jenkins-pipeline/
which say it's not possible.
But I'm sure some people have the same need, so some solutions should exist.

Jenkins executing one job that runs multiple jobs

i am new to Jenkins , i need to execute one job that run's another multiple jobs in parallel were it should not stop even if one job fails.
i am not sure how to achieve it. After googling i can achieve by 3 ways Multi-Job plugin , Pipeline multiple Jenkins jobs , Build after other projects , Build Flow Plugin.
can any body please provide me the correct way.
Update : i am trying to achieve this using the pipeline plugin , can any body suggest me were it was correct choice ?..Please suggest!..
We use the Parameterized Trigger Plugin to do this.
In your build configuration add a Trigger/call builds on other projects build step. Add the names of the builds you want to trigger as a comma separated list and make sure that the Block until triggered projects finish their builds box is unchecked. Your build will trigger each of the listed builds, however note that your parent build won't wait for them to finish it will just trigger them and then perform the rest of it's buildsteps so if you have buildsteps.
If you do want to wait then check the block until triggered builds finish box, but set the options for when to fail the build, build step or mark the build as unstable appropriately.
If you need to pass parameters to the jobs you can add parameters using this plugin. If your downstream jobs need different parameters for different jobs you can click the add trigger button which adds another project to build where you can specify different options.
If these other jobs are follow up jobs to the current job and you don't need to wait for them to finish you can also achieve what you want to do by using the post build action build other projects, but again this occurs after the current job and you won't be able to use the results.
can any body please provide me the correct way.
I wouldn't approach using Jenkins with a "one correct way" mentality. Often times the requirements of your build will dictate which method or plugin you use in your build configurations.
The job can start other jobs via the jenkins api.
updated Answer : i used pipeline plugin to achieve my task and tuffwer was right to if u have paramaterized trigger plugin!..

Jenkins: launch same job with different parameters

I have a job to maven build our project, we now have one job per release version. As the number of releases grows, there are too many jobs and very hard to find the one we need.
I wonder if there is a way to launch the same job with different parameters? The problem is one job only has one workspace, so I'm not sure if it's possible?
Thanks.
Use This build is Parameterized option to build the jobs. Using this you can build the same job for different parameters. You will be asked to enter the parameter before building or you can also give a default parameter and you can have multiple parameters.
It is good the archive the artifacts which you need later.
You can also have the option keep build forever, this will keep the builds permanently Ir-respective of the number of builds to keep.
To use above option you should enable Discard old build option.
You can also link your repository directly to Jenkins which will trigger the job whenever a new commit is made to master or a new tag is created.

Run Jenkins job all the time

I've a Jenkins job I want to keep running all the time. When a build is ending, I want to immediately trigger another build. How can I do that?
Thanks, Omer
There are two different job configurations for that:
Build Triggers -> Build after other projects are built
Add a post-build action Build other projects
In both cases, you can enter your own Project, so it'll be triggered again every time a build is completed. You can also specify if this should be done only while the project is stable.
There is however one (probably more) drawback in this approach, which is that it'll create enormous overview pages, where all build triggers are listed:
So i'd recommend to do something else and for example use the Jenkins API to trigger a new build. There are many ways to do that, one simple example is adding a build step Execute shell and do something like:
curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/job/$JOB_NAME/build
If you have configured the Jenkins URL, you could also use $JOB_URL. You can also add post parameters to trigger a parameterized build.

How to conditionally build other projects?

I have a fairly complicated Jenkins job that builds, unit tests and packages a web application. Depending on the situation, I would like to do different things once this job completes. I have not found a re-usable/maintainable way to do this. Is that really the case or am I missing something?
The options I would like to have once my complicated job completes:
Do nothing
Start my low-risk-change build pipeline:
copies my WAR file to my artifact repository
deploys to production
Start my high-risk-change build pipeline:
copies my WAR file to my artifact repository
deploys to test
run acceptance tests
deploy to production
I have not found an easy way to do this. The simplest, but not very maintainable approach would be to make three separate jobs, each of which kicks off a downstream build. This approach scares me for a few reasons including the fact that changes would have to be made in three places instead of one. In addition, many of the downstream jobs are also nearly identical. The only difference is which downstream jobs they call. The proliferation of jobs seems like it would lead to an un-maintainable mess.
I have looked at using several approaches to keep this as one job, but none have worked so far:
Make the job a multi-configuration project (https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Building+a+matrix+project). This provides a way to inject the job with a parameter. I have not found a way to make the "build other projects" step respond to a parameter.
Use the Parameterized-Trigger plugin (https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Parameterized+Trigger+Plugin). This plugin lets you trigger downstream-jobs based on certain triggers. The triggers appear to be too restrictive though. They're all based on the state of the build, not arbitrary variables. I don't see any option provided here that would work for my use case.
Use the Flexible Publish plugin (https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Flexible+Publish+Plugin). This plugin has the opposite problem as the parameterized-trigger plugin. It has many useful conditions it can check, but it doesn't look like it can start building another project. Its actions are limited to publishing type activities.
Use Flexible Publish + Any Build Step plugin (https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Any+Build+Step+Plugin). The Any Build Step plugin allows making any build action available to the Flexible Publish plugin. While more actions were made available once this plugin was activated, those actions didn't include "build other projects."
Is there really not an easy way to do this? I'm surprised that I haven't found it and even more surprised that I haven't really seen any one else trying to do this? Am I doing something unusual? Is there something obvious that I am missing?
If I understood it correct you should be able to do this by following these Steps:
First Build Step:
Does the regular work. In your case: building, unit testing and packaging of the web application
Depending on the result let it create a file with a specific name.
This means if you want the low-risk-change to run afterwards create a file low-risk.prop
Second Build Step:
Create a Trigger/call builds on other projects Step from the Parameterized-Trigger
plugin.
Entery the name of your low-risk job into the Projects to build field
Click on: Add Parameter
Choose: Parameters from properties File
Enter low-risk.prop into the Use properties from file Field
Enable Don't trigger if any files are missing
Third Build Step:
Check if a low-risk.prop file exists
Delete the File
Do the same for the high-risk job
Now you should have the following Setup:
if a file called low-risk.prop occurs during the first Build Step the low-risk job will be started
if a file called high-risk.prop occurs during the first Build Step the high-risk job will be started
if there's no .prop File nothing happens
And that's what you wanted to achieve. Isn't it?
Have you looked at the Conditional Build Plugin? (https://wiki.jenkins.io/display/JENKINS/Conditional+BuildStep+Plugin)
I think it can do what you're looking for.
If you want a conditional post-build step, there is a plugin for that:
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Post+build+task
It will search the console log for a RegEx you specify, and if found, will execute a custom script. You can configure fairly complex criteria, and you can configure multiple sets of criteria each executing different post build tasks.
It doesn't provide you with the usual "build step" actions, so you've got to write your own script there. You can trigger execution of the same job with different parameters, or another job with some parameters, in standard ways that jenkins supports (for example using curl)
Yet another alternative is Jenkins text finder plugin:
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Text-finder+Plugin
This is a post-build step that allows to forcefully mark a build as "unstable" if a RegEx is found in console text (or even some file in workspace). So, in your build steps, depending on your conditions, echo a unique line into console log, and then do a RegEx for that line. You can then use "Trigger parameterized buids" and set the condition as "unstable". This has an added benefit of visually marking the build different (with a yellow ball), however you only have 1 conditional option with this method, and from your OP, looks like you need 2.
Try a combination of these 2 methods:
Do you use Ant for your builds?
If so, it's possible to do conditional building in ant by having a set of environment variables your build scripts can use to conditionally build. In Jenkins, your build will then be building all of the projects, but your actual build will decide whether it builds or just short-circuits.
I think the way to do it is to add an intermediate job that you put in the post-build step and pass to it all the parameters your downstream jobs could possibly need, and then within that job place conditional builds for the real downstream jobs.
The simplest approach I found is to trigger other jobs remotely, so that you can use Conditional Build Plugin or any other plugins to build other jobs conditionally.

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