I am currently using Cloudbees Jenkins Coreas my Jenkins solution.
I am using Jenkins Pipelines to write our Jenkins job configuration. These pipelines are stored in GitHub repositories. Each Jenkins job when created is connected to a GitHub Repository where the source code is pulled from, and that's where the Jenkinsfile is stored and Jenkins reads from.
Below are some high-level photos for how our Jenkins jobs are configured.
The advantage of the way these jobs are configured is the Jenkinsfile is always read from the master branch. Meaning if a rouge developer tries to remove stages from the Jenkinsfile from within there own branch, it doesn't matter because the Jenkinsfile is always read from the master branch (which is always protected).
However, the one massive drawback to this - is how do teams and developers who are devops engineerings make changes to the Jenkinsfile? For example, let's say a developer creates a branch called feature-jenkins-search and they edit the Jenkinsfile adding a new stage in the pipeline. Whenever they push these changes to GitHub to test - they can't test as it's always read from the master branch? Meaning devops engineerings have to work directly on the master branch? Surely this is not the best way to go and there is a better configuration to set?
We do want to still provide the security that if a developer is rougue and
You should really look into the Jenkins multi-branch pipeline feature. The Jenkins multi-branch pipeline allows to create a single configuration item in Jenkins (a bit like a folder) that can detect all the branches and pull requests in a GitHub repository with a Jenkinsfile and build them using automatically created jobs. Inside this multi-branch pipeline object when it is configured in Jenkins, you will find a number of jobs to build the various branches and pull-requests in the GitHub repository.
So your developers should maintain a Jenkinsfile in every branch they work on in GitHub to build that branch in your Jenkins server.
It is possible to make the Jenkinsfile do branch specific handling if required with conditional stages / when conditions in the Jenkinsfile pipelines in each branch.
You can lock down the master branch so that code and Jenkinsfile changes from other branches can only be merged with an approved PR (pull request). There is good integration between Jenkins and GitHub such that you can configure the master branch to only allow a PR to be merged if the PR is buildable in Jenkins. So if developers add new stages / processing to a Jenkinsfile on a branch being merged to master, it should be validated so that builds of your master branch are not broken.
There is a lot of configurability in the Jenkins multi-branch pipeline object for detection and handling of branches and it may be necessary to experiment to get it right for what you need with your team. If you cannot find this feature in Jenkins, it is probably because the correct Jenkins pipeline and GitHub related plugins are not installed.
You could also have a look at a similar Jenkins feature called the Jenkins GitHub Organization Folder which allows to detect and build all repos and branches at a GitHub Organization level. But when starting out, I would suggest to look into the multi-branch pipeline at the single repo level first.
These features are discussed in the Jenkins pipeline documentation. We use these features with our internal GitHub and Jenkins server and it works very well.
I think you will find the idea of using a single Jenkinsfile in the master branch to be used for building all branches is unworkable, as you have seen!
Related
I'm in the process of migrating git-based projects to use a shared Pipeline definition from a governance tier built with Jenkins Templating Engine.
In the process of testing I cloned the project and pushed it to a new repository in Bitbucket where it was recognized by Jenkins and the template was used immediately based on the definitions in pipeline_config.groovy. However, this is not a sane migration path for existing projects. How do I get Jenkins to start using the template on branches without Jenkinsfile and the Jenkinsfile on branches with a Jenkinsfile.
The result of of "Scan Multibranch Pipeline Now" according to the logs is ‘Jenkinsfile’ not found. Skipping. I assume that a new project regonizer is provided by the Jenkins Templating Plugin.
I assume that every project with Git Flow has to perform this migration, so I'm confused there's no documentation.
I'm using Jenkins 2.306 and JTE plugin 2.3.
It seems that newer versions of JTE or Jenkins allow a mixture of branches with JTE and without.
In case you have to deal with versions that don't do the following:
Once I removed Jenkinsfile from every branch and put a pipeline_config.groovy on every branch the Multibranch Plugin started recognizing the project first as removed and at the next scan as present with all branches which were all using the Jenkins Template Engine.
Not the best migration imo, but a great opportunity to cleanup old branches. Since my project was using Git Flow I needed to make a technical hotfix release to also migrate away from Jenkinsfile on master.
I have set up a multibranch pipeline job for a repository in SVN. Since I want to keep the jenkinsfiles the same in all branches, they are not really located in the branches, but in a different location and only referenced via svn:externals.
Unfortunately the multibranch pipeline does not seem to follow these references and doesn't find the jenkinsfiles (the paths are correctly set):
Checking candidate branch /branches/aaa/bbb/ccc#HEAD
‘ddd\eee\fff\jenkinsfile' not found
Does not meet criteria
Is there any way to tell Jenkins and the multibranch-pipeline plugin setup to also follow svn:externals when looking for the jenkinsfiles?
By default, Jenkins is trying to get the Jenkinsfile with a lightweight checkout which does not consider svn:externals.
This behavior can be (only generally) deactivated, see https://wiki.jenkins.io/display/JENKINS/Subversion+Plugin, chapter "lightweight checkout capability for Subversion on Multibranch Pipeline projects and Externals support"
We are currently using Windows \ Jenkins 2.107.1 (no pipeline), and I am researching going to pipeline. We have a nightly build job, that fetches from repositories, and submits and waits on other jobs. I see 9 jobs running on the same Master node (we only have a master), at the same time. I am not clear on if we should have one Jenkinsfile or multiple Jenkinsfiles. It will not be a multibranch pipeline, as we do not create test branches and then merge back to a master. In the repository we have product1.0 branch, product2.0 branch etc, and build only one branch (the latest one). While I do like the Blue Ocean editor, it is only for MultiBranch pipelines.
Do I combine all the jobs into one Jenkinsfile, or create multiple jenkins files for each of the existing jobs (Jenkinsfilestart, JenkinsfileFetchCVs, JenkinsFileFetchGit, Jenkinsfilenextjob,etc., and have one call the other)?. Do I create all the old jobs as Jenkinsfiles, or scripts executed by the one master Jenkinsfile? Do I do this in Declarative or script ?
Have set up Jenkins pipeline on test VM, but not clear on which way to go yet.
Looking for directions and\or examples. Is there documentation on how to convert existing Jenkins non-pipeline systems?
I found this after doing the initial post...https://wiki.jenkins.io/display/JENKINS/Convert+To+Pipeline+Plugin.
It does help a little in that it gives you some converted steps, but cannot convert all the steps, and will give comments in the pipeline script "//Unable to convert a build step referring to...please verify and convert manually if required." There is an option "Recursively convert downstream jobs if any" and if you select that, it appears to add all the downstream jobs to the same pipeline script, and really confuses the job parameters. There is also an option to "Commit JenkinsFile". I will play with this some more, but it is not the be all and end all of converting to pipeline, and I still am not sure of whether I should be have one or more scripts.
Added 07/26/19 -
Let’s see if I have my research to date correct…
A Declarative pipeline (Pipeline Script from SCM), is stored in a Jenkinsfile in the repository. Every time that this Jenkins job is executed, a fetch from the repository is done (to get the latest version of the Jenkinsfile).
A Pipeline script is stored as part of the config.xml file in the Jenkins\Jobs folder (it is not stored in the repository, or in a separate Jenkinsfile in the jobs folder). There is a fetch from the repository only if the job requires it (you do not need to do a repository fetch to get the Pipeline script).
Besides our nightly product build, we also have other jobs. I could create a separate Declarative Jenkinsfile for each of them (JenkinsfileA, JenkinsfileB, etc.) for each of the other jobs and store then in the repository also (in the same branch as the main Jenkinsfile), but that would mean that every one of those additional jobs, to get the particular Jenkinsfile for that job, would also need to do a repository fetch (basically fetching\cloning the repository branch for each job, and have multiple versions of the repository branch unnecessarily downloaded to the workspace of each job).
That does not make sense to me (unless my understanding of things to date is incorrect). Because the main product build does require a fetch every time it is run (to get any possible developer check-ins), I do not see a problem doing Declarative Jenkinsfile for that job. For the other jobs (if we do not leave then for the time being in the classic (non-pipeline) format)), they will be Pipeline scripts.
Is there any way of (or plans for), being able to do Declarative pipeline without having to store in the repository and doing a fetch every time (lessening the need to become a Groovy developer)? The Blue Ocean script editor appears to be an easier tool to use to create pipeline scripts, but it is only for MultiBranch pipelines (which we don’t do).
Serialization (restarting a job), is that only for when a node goes down, or can you restart a pipeline job (Declarative or Scripted), from any point if it fails?
I see that there are places to look to see what Jenkins plugin’s have been ported to pipeline, but is there anything that can be run to take a look at the classic jobs that you have, to determine up front which jobs are going to have problems being converted to pipeline?
08/02/19...
Studying and playing with pipelines. I see that you can use Declarative in the Pipeline Scrip window, but it still stores it in the config.xml file. And I have played with the combination of both Declarative and non Declarative in the same script.
I am trying to understand the Blue Ocean interface, the word "MultiBranch" is throwing me a little. We do not create test branches, and them merge them back into the master. In the repository, we have branches for each release of the product, and we rarely go back to previous branches\versions. So, if I am working on branchV9 right now, do I also need a Jenkinsfile in the Master branch, or any other of the previous version branches?
I have been playing with Blue Ocean (which only does MultiBranch pipelines). I am on a Windows system, Jenkins 2.176.2, and have all the latest Blue Ocean plugins as of today (1.18.0). I am accessing a local Git repository (not GitHub), and am running into the following...
If I try to use use “c:\GitRepos\Pipelines1.git”, i get "not a valid name"...
Why does it do this?
If you have a single job that you would be executed on multiple branches (with possibly optional stages, depending on the branch name or tag or other) then you still could utilize multi branch pipeline.
In general I would say that paradigm shift focuses mainly on converting the old jobs to stages in order to automate your build process. If you would have semi/fully automated CI/CD flow this could look like
Multibranch pipeline project (all branches) with the following stages (1st jenkinsfile)
build (all branches)
unit tests (all branches) publish report
publish artifacts (master and release branches)
build and publish docker (master and release branches)
deploy to test (master and release branches)
run integration tests (master and release branches)
deploy to staging (master and release branches) possibly ending with manual step if result of deployment was as expected
deploy to production (release branches)
Pipeline job for nightly tests (other jenkinsfile), what's the result here? Would it break CI/CD flow?
We are using jenkins for manual triggered jobs to deploy some code.
Jenkinsfile describing our pipeline is located in a jenkinsfile dedicated repo (not in deployed code repo).
We are using declarative pipeline syntax and shared libraries in our jenkinsfiles.
In BlueOcean interface there are 2 interesting attributes (branch and commit) automatically filled when using plugins to trigger pipelines (like github organization).
I'm searching a way to set/update these 2 attributes manually from within the pipeline code for our manual pipelines.
Job description and name can be easily updated using something like :
stage('Set pipeline description'){
steps {
script {
currentBuild.description = "Deploying branch ${branch} on ${targetEnv}"
}
}
}
But I didn't find anywhere how to update branch or commit values.
Did anybody try this ?
This issue is reported as bug (see link).
"We are using GitLab web hooks to trigger Jenkins Pipeline project builds on new commit push to GitLab. Build is triggered, CI commit status report is being sent back to gitlab, but can't see branch and commit field in Header-details element."
Please vote on this issue on Jenkins CI website if you want for the issue to be resolved sooner.
I am migrating my old Jenkins free-style job to multi-branch pipeline. I also want to use GitLab hook with them.
My problem is the branch detection. I am doing it manually but I want it to be automatic: when a new branch is pushed to git, GitLab trigger a Jenkins job that trigger the branch detection if the branch parameter from GitLab is not known for Jenkins at the moment. Is this possible to do it or doesn't this exist?
FYI: I tried to launch the multi-branch pipeline job but Jenkins says:
ERROR: No parameterized job named XXX found.
Enable "Build Periodcally" in your multibranch job configuration and the branch indexing will automatically started.
What you really need is a branch source plugin for GitLab with webhook integration, which is tracked as an RFE in JIRA.
Failing that, use a plain Git branch source and configure GitLab to send Jenkins notifications to /git/notifyCommit (IIRC) as documented on the Git plugin wiki. Need specify only a url, no other details. The branch indexing this triggers should both detect new or removed branches, and changes to the head of an existing branch, and schedule builds accordingly.
You can set webhook in GitLab for push events and URL like http://<yourserver>/git/notifyCommit?url=<URL of the Git repository>.
See https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Git+Plugin#GitPlugin-Pushnotificationfromrepository
GitLab notifies Jenkins on push events which should trigger branch detection also for multibranch pipeline.
I didn't receive the answer I wanted and I ran into this issue today that answered the question :
https://github.com/jenkinsci/gitlab-plugin/issues/298
TLDR: Multi-branch pipeline are not supported yet to be triggered by gitlab commit easily. There is a workaround. Look at the link above.