I am trying to run UI tests on multiple identical instances of the web application. For example, let's say the identical version of the application is available at 3 places:
https://some1.app.com
https://some2.app.com
https://some3.app.com
The intended system should check which instance is available and run a test (that is not already run) on it. It should be able to run 3 tests on the 3 instances simultaneously in the Jenkins environment.
I have explored the Jenkins Matrix Configuration, but that appears to run all tests on all possible combinations in the matrix. My intention is to divide and load balance the tests, not run on all combinations. Any ideas on how this can be done?
I am using JUnit4 with Ant for running the tests on Jenkins.
One solution would be a Matrix Project Plugin. You could configure your url as parameter a bit like in here: Building a matrix project
We would like to set up Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment processes on the base of Jenkins ecosystem. Currently we're trying to put together all the Jenkins build jobs we have (from sources to several endpoint processes launched on the testing server). There are three kinds of build/deployment processes in our case:
Building deb packages from C++ projects (some of them are dependent, others are dependencies);
Building images from Docker containers;
Launching some processes in the endpoint;
As you can notice, we faced with a heavily branched chain of jobs triggered by each other. And every update of any of the upstream projects must go throughout the chain of jobs and trigger the final job (process I). So It would be nice to use some kind of Jenkins plugins that will:
Control such a complicated structure of jobs (I tried to use Build Pipeline Plugin and I got the impression that this tool is suitable for "linear" job chain);
Provide clean way of passing the parameters between job environments.
As #slav mentioned, the Workflow plugin should be able to handle this kind of complex control flow, including parallel handling of subtasks, simple handling of variables throughout the process (would just be Groovy local variables), and Docker support.
You could of course arrange this whole process in a single build.gradle (or Makefile for that matter). That would be suitable if you did not mind running all the steps on the same Jenkins slave, and did not otherwise need to interact with or report to Jenkins in any particular way in the middle of the build.
Well, for passing parameters, you should be using Parameterized Trigger Plugin.
For a more asynchronous passing of parameters, you an use EnvInject plugin (it's extremely useful and flexible for all sorts of things, and considering your complexity, might prove useful regardless if you use it for passing parameters or not)
As for control, research into Workflow plugin. It allows to write the whole execution flow in it's own Groovy script, with fine granular control. More links:
Official - https://jenkins-ci.org/content/workflow-plugin-10
Tutorial - https://github.com/jenkinsci/workflow-plugin/blob/c15589f/TUTORIAL.md#pausing-flyweight-vs-heavyweight-executors
I am using the combination of Jenkins, python, unittest, nosetests to run test suites. I publish the results in nosetests.xml to Jenkins using Junit plugin.
My question: How can I run the same test suites with different browsers (Chrome, FF, IE,…,etc) and publish all the results in the same Jenkins job and still be able to distinguish each test result with respect to browser it used?
I am thinking about running the test suite many time, each with different browser and rename the tests in each nosetest report, nosetests.xml, before publishing to Jenkins but I don’t think that it is an elegant solution.
Thanks for your help
This is what multi-configuration jobs (or matrix jobs) are designed for in Jenkins.
You specify your job configuration once, but add one or more variables that should change each time, building a matrix of combinations (in your case, the matrix has one dimension: browser).
Jenkins then runs one main build with multiple sub-builds — one for each combination in the matrix. You can then clearly see the results for each combination.
This requires that your test job can be parameterised, i.e. you can choose at runtime which browser should be run, rather than running all tests together in a single job.
The Jenkins wiki has minimal documentation on this feature, but there are a few good blog posts (and Stack Overflow questions) out there on how to set it up.
I want to setup a continous integration system that upon a commit or similar trigger should:
run tests on a fortran/C/C++ code, if needed.
compile that code using cmake.
run tests on a rails app.
compile the rails ap.
restart the server.
I'm looking at Jenkins. Is it the best choice for this kind of work? Also, what's the difference between using a bash script that makes all that (if possible) and using jenkins? I'm asking not because I'm thinking about using a script, but to better understand jenkins.
It sounds like Jenkins would certainly be a reasonable choice for this. Apart from the ability to run arbitrary scripts as build steps, there's also a large number of plugins, which provide better integration with cmake for example.
Even if you're using a single bash script to do all of this, using Jenkins on top of it would still have a number of advantages. You get a web interface, email notifications and build history for free, with all that this entails. By integrating your tests "properly" with Jenkins, you can also get things like graphs that show how many tests succeeded/failed over time.
I am using Jenkins for java projects and have to say it is easy to configure. I used to add lots of plugins for better configuration of build steps, but tend to go back to using scripting languages for build and deploy steps because of two main reasons. If I have a build script, it's easier to configure the same job on a different Jenkins server or run the script manually if need be and the build configuration is not so cluttered (I still have one maven job with more than 50 post build steps). The second reason is, that it is easier to version the scripts in SVN, compared to having the build config in SVN.
So to answer your questions. I don't know if it is the 'best' tool, but it is good enough for me. Regarding scripting: use each tool for what it is build for. Jenkins a glorified cron deamon with great options when it comes to displaying analysis. The learning curve for people to use it is minimal (i.e. starting a job, seeing whether it failed.) Configuring Jenkins needs a little bit more learning, but it's very easy to set up simple jobs and go then to the more complicated tasks.
For the first four activities Jenkins will do the job and is rather the best choice nowadays, but for things like restarting the server (which is actually "remote execution"), better have a look at:
http://saltstack.com/
or:
https://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Home
http://cfengine.com/
http://puppetlabs.com/
http://cfengine.com/
Libraries like Fabric(Python) or Capistrano(Ruby) might be useful too.
Why are there two kinds of jobs for Jenkins, both the multi-configuration project and the free-style project project? I read somewhere that once you choose one of them, you can't convert to the other (easily). Why wouldn't I always pick the multi-configuration project in order to be safe for future changes?
I would like to setup a build for a project building both on Windows and Unix (and other platforms as well). I found this question), which asks the same thing, but I don't really get the answer. Why would I need three matrix projects (and not three free-style projects), one for each platform? Why can't I keep them all in one matrix, with platforms AND (for example) gcc version on one axis and (my) software versions on the other?
I also read this blog post, but that builds everything on the same machine, with just different Python versions.
So, in short: how do most people configure a multi-configuration project targeting many different platforms?
The two types of jobs have separate functions:
Free-style jobs: these allow you to build your project on a single computer or label (group of computers, for eg "Windows-XP-32").
Multi-configuration jobs: these allow you to build your project on multiple computers or labels, or a mix of the two, for eg Windows-XP, Windows-Vista, Windows-7 and RedHat - useful for checking compatibility or building for multiple platforms (qt programs?)
If you have a project which you want to build on Windows & Unix, you have two options:
Create a separate free-style job for each configuration, in which case you have to maintain each one individually
You have one multi-configuration job, and you select 2 (or more) labels/computers/slaves - 1 for Windows and 1 for Unix. In this case, you only have to maintain one job for the build
You can keep the your gcc versions on one axis, and software versions on another. There is no reason you should not be able to.
The question that you link has a fair point, but one that does not relate to your question directly: in his case, he had a multi-configuration job A, which - on success - triggered another job B. Now, in a multi-configuration job, if one of the configuration fails, the entire job fails (obviously, since you want your project to build successfully on all your configurations).
IMHO, for building the same project on multiple platforms, the better way to go is to use a multi-configuration style job.
Another option is to use a python build step to check the current OS and then call an appropriate setup or build script. In the python script, you can save the updated environment to a file and inject the environment again using the EnvInject plugin for subsequent build steps. Depending on the size of your build environment, you could also use a multi-platform build tool like SCons.
You could create a script (e.g. build) and a batch file (e.g. build.bat) that get checked in with your source code. In Jenkins in your build step you can call $WORKSPACE/build - Windows will execute build.bat whereas Linux will run build.
An option is to use user-defined axis combined with slaves(windows, linux, ...), so you need to add a filter for each combination and use the Conditional BuildStep Plugin to set the build step specific for each plataform(Executar shell, Windows command, ...)
This link has a tutorial but it is in portuguese, but it's easy to work it out based on image...
http://manhadalasanha.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/projeto-de-multiplas-configuracoes-matrix-no-jenkins/
You could use the variable that jenkins create when you define a configuration matrix axis. For example:
You create a slave axis with name OSTYPE and check the two slaves (Windows and Linux). Then you create two separate build steps and check for the OSTYPE environment variable.
You could use a improved script language instead, like python, which is multi-platform and can achieve the same functionality independent of the slaves' name and in just one build step.
If you go the matrix route with Windows and something else, you'll want the XShell plugin. You just create your two build scripts such as "build.bat" for cmd and "build" for bash, and tell XShell to run "build". The right one will be run in each case.
A hack to have batch files run on Windows and shell scripts on Unix:
On Unix, make batch files exit with 0 exit status:
ln -s /bin/true /bin/cmd
On Windows, either find a true.exe, name it sh.exe and place it somewhere in the PATH.
Alternatively, if you have any sh.exe installed on Windows (From Cygwin, Git, or other source), add this to the top of the shell script in Jenkins:
[ -n "$WINDIR" ] && exit 0
Why wouldn't you always pick the multi-configuration job type?
Some reasons come to mind:
Because jobs should be easy to create and configure. If it is hard to configure any job in your environment, you are probably doing something wrong outside the scope of the jenkins job. If you are happy that you managed to create that one job and it finally runs, and you are reluctant to do this whole work again, that's where you should try to improve.
Because multi configuration jobs are more complex. They usually require you to think about both the main job and the different sub job variables, and they tend to grow in complexity to a level beyond being manageable. So in a single job scenario, you'd probably waste thoughts on not using that complexity, and when extending the build variables, things might grow in the wrong direction. I'd suggest using the simple jobs as default, and the multi configuration jobs only if there is a need for multiple configurations.
Because executing multi configuration jobs might need more job slots on the slaves than single jobs. There will always be a master job that is executed on a special, invisible slot (that's no problem by itself) and triggers the sub jobs, but if these sub jobs do themselves trigger sub jobs, you might easily end in a deadlock if there are more sub jobs than slots, and some sub jobs trigger again sub jobs that then cannot execute because there are no more open slots. This problem might be circumvented by using some configuration setup on the slaves, but it is present and might only occur if several multi jobs run concurrently.
So in essence: The multi configuration job is a more complex thing, and because complexity should be avoided unless necessary, the regular freestyle job is a better default.
If you want to select on which slave you run the job, you need to use multi-configuration project (otherwise you won't be able to select/limit slaves on which you run it – there are three ways to do it, however I've tried them all (Tie plugin works only for master job, Restrict in Advanced Project Options is not rock-safe trigger as well so you want to use Slave axis that is proven to work correctly today.)