I was hoping someone could help with ideas in Jenkins for sharing a build increment across multibranch pipelines on multiple build machines. Looking through similar questions, I didn't see anything better than timestamp instead of build number but it's not quite what we were looking for.
I am using Jenkinsfiles to define multiple pipelines, then 'multibranch' to instantiate them across all branches. Currently these just call shared freestyle jobs to implement the stages. Every pipeline invokes the same job to do a build, across a pool of build machines, so we can just use that build number to increment the version. For example I have v1.2 being worked on by several branches, each having a CI, Nightly, and Release pipelines. They all invoke the same build sub-job so you might have CI/BranchA run sub-job #503 on buildVM1 so will have version string 1.2.503, then Nightly/BranchB will run sub-job #504 on buildVM2 so will have version string 1.2.504. This works great as long as I am invoking the same build sub-job.
The next step is to implement the builds as part of the Jenkinsfile pipeline, but then I lose my convenient build increment. How can I define a shared build increment for this component across all branches defining the same major.minor version?
Timestamp is a bit unwieldy since the multiple branches/teams/build machines means I need to go to seconds. Do I really need versions like 1.2.20180118165007? There's got to be a better way.
How else can I manage this?
Related
Following the Jenkins Best Practices, I want to avoid that Build Jobs/Pipelines could be executed into my Jenkins Master.
To do so, I've installed the Job Restrictions Plugin, using it to configure the Master to run only some Maintenance Pipelines.
The problem is that now Build Pipelines that are configured to run on specific Agents, are not executed anymore. I see that the Build Queue continuously grows, and the Pipelines are not runned. I think that this behaviour could be related to Flyweight Executors of the Master.
So, the question is the following: How can I execute on Master just a little subset of Maintenance Pipelines and, in the mean time, execute Build Pipelines only on specific Agent?
You can configure the master node to only be used when explicitly named. Just click the master node > go to configure and change Use this node as much as possible to Only build jobs with label expressions matching this node
I found the solution that perfectly fits with my needs, here.
To quickly sum up the solution, I was to able to exclude all the user Builds from Master and run on it only the Jobs/Pipelines of a specific Jenkins folder (IuA in my case), configuring the Job Restrictions Plugin in the following way:
In order to better understand the logic behind this solution, I recommend you to give a look at link that I posted above.
I want to have one Jenkins job control the build number of another job but without the inconvenience of reloading the entire project configuration from disk. I have seen that it's easily possible to directly update the nextBuildNumber file of the target job (I can do this as a build step of Job A) but this does not take effect immediately. Restarting Jenkins or even reloading the Jenkins configs from disk takes way too long and can only be done when there are no builds in progress.
I have tried the groovy script mentioned in the below post by running it from the Manage Jenkins > Script Console. The same post also suggests the script can be saved as a file and run from the CLI. Can it be run from a build step?
I want Job A to determine Job B's next build number and set it so that Job B can run (later in the same day) with the desired build number.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/20077362/4306857
Perhaps I should clarify. I'm not familiar with Groovy so I'm looking at the various build step options like "Execute Windows batch command" which I have a lot of experience with. I can see an "Invoke Gradle script" option so I was wondering if there may be a plugin that can run Groovy scripts perhaps?
The reason this requirement has arisen is that we are compiling a product for two different platforms. We want to compile the codebase almost simultaneously for both platforms with two jobs (A & B) which will both update the JIRA cases included in the builds. We feel it will be less confusing to have both these jobs running with the same build number so that when we talk about a particular issue being addressed in build #75, say, we won't have to qualify that by stating the full job name. If JOB-A build #75 and JOB-B build #75 are both compiled on the same day from the same codebase we can test and compare the results of both builds with far less confusion than if the build numbers go out of sync.
Obviously, in the short term we will use the Set Next Build Number plugin to manually keep the build numbers in step but we want to automate this if possible.
Depends on whether or not you are using Version Number plugin:
[ X ] Create a formatted version number
Build Display Name [ X ] Use the formatted version number for build display name.
Assuming you are NOT, this groovy script will do:
def NextNumber=42
job=Jenkins.instance.getItemByFullName('path/to/jobName')
job.nextBuildNumber = NextNumber
job.save();
You will need groovy plugin for that. Place that in an "Execute system Groovy script" step. Make sure to choose system groovy. That will execute on the master, where the job config and metadata is stored so you have access to the Jenkins internals and data.
I'd suggest you should really be using the above options rather than relying on "keeping both jobs in sync" via a script or manually. You can then pass the label to be used from the first job as a parameter to the second job. That would also require Parameterized Trigger as well as Version Number plugins.
You can even use ${BUILD_DATE_FORMATTED} or ${BUILD_TIMESTAMP}, etc.
Postdate: thinking about the problemspace from a different perspective, that of running 2+ builds on different platforms (simultaneously), there's a plugin for that: Matrix project. You can run it as a freeatyle job on multiple nodes or is excellently described as Matrix building in scripted pipeline. Not sure how that would tie in to JIRA.
We are in the process of switching from VSoft Continua CI to Jenkins for our build management environment. As we use a slightly modified Gitflow process we would like Jenkins to be able to build from any feature, release or hotfix branch and pull requests, we decided to go for the Jenkins Pipeline.
The version number for builds from the release and hotfix branches are based on the branch name (e.g. release/2.1.0) while builds from any other branch or pull request is based on the date (e.g. September 6th 2018 resolves to 18.9.6). Continua CI provides a auto increment build number across all build configurations that is why we use this build number as the final part of our build number (e.g. 2.1.0.10, 18.9.6.11, 2.1.0.12, ...). This generated version number is passed as parameter to MSBuild using this version number as the file version and assembly version of our .NET binaries.
I'm looking for a similar solution in Jenkins. The Jenkins Pipeline assigns a separate auto increment build number per branch and pull request which might lead to two builds from different branches having the same version. I already tried using global environment variables to store the version and increase the value with every build but it seems that global enviroment variables cannot be set from Pipeline tasks.
Is there a way for a Jenkins Pipeline project to share a build number across all branches/pull requests?
Here are a few ideas:
have it file based: have your stage execute on, say, the master node; pick a file and decide on the format (properties file can be a good start); lock, read, update, write, unlock.
delegate this to an external service (for instance, a service with a
REST endpoint that you use to request an ID).
write a plugin for it.
I am working with Jenkins, and we have quite a few projects that all use the same tasks, i.e. we set a few variables, change the version, restore packages, start sonarqube, build the solution, run unit/integration tests, stop sonarqube etc. The only difference would be like {Solution_Name}, everything else is exactly the same.
What my question is, is there a way to create 1 'Shared' job, that does all that work, while the job for building the project passes the variables down to that shared worker job. What i'm looking for is the ability to not have to create all the tasks for all of our services/components. It be really nice if each of our services/components could have only 2 tasks, one to set the variables, another to run the shared job.
Is this possible?
Thanks in advance.
You could potentially benefit from looking into the new pipelines as code feature.
https://jenkins.io/doc/book/pipeline/
Using this pattern, you define your build pipeline in a groovy script rather than the jenkins' UI. This script is then kept in the codebase of the project it builds in a file called Jenkinsfile.
By checking this pipeline into a git repository, you can create a minimal configuration on the jenkins' side and simply tell it to look towards a specific repo and do the things that pipeline says to do.
There's a few benefits to this approach if it works for your setup. The big one being that your build pipeline will be fully versioned just like the project it builds. And the repository becomes portable, easily able to be built on any jenkins' installation across as many jobs as long as the pipeline plugins are installed.
Use case:
CI server polls some VSC repository and runs test suite for each revision. And if two or more revisions were commited, even in a relatively small time interval, I want the CI server to put each of them in queue, run tests for each, store the results, and never run tests again for those commits. And I don't want the CI server to launch jobs in parallel, to avoid performance issues and crashes in case of many simultaneous jobs.
Which CI server is able to handle this?
My additional, less important requirement is that I use Python and it is desirable to use software written in Python, so I looked at the Buildbot project, and I especially want to see reviews for this tool in the matter of is it usable in general and is it capable of replacing most popular solutions like Travis or Jenkins.
I have used jenkins to do this. (with subversion mainly, c/c++ build and also bash/python scripted jobs)
The easiest and default handling of VCS/SCM changes in jenkins is to poll for changes on a set time. A build is triggered if there is any change. More than one commit may be included in build (e.g. if 2 commits are done close together) when using this method. Jenkins shows links back to scm and scm update done as well as showing build logs and you can easily configure build outputs and test result presentation.
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Building+a+software+project#Buildingasoftwareproject-Buildsbysourcechanges
What VCS/SCM are you using? Jenkins interfaces to a good few VCS/SCM:
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Plugins#Plugins-Sourcecodemanagement
This question answers how to make Jenkins build on every subversion commit:
Jenkins CI: How to trigger builds on SVN commit
TeamCity is free (up to a number of builds and build agents) and feature-rich. It's very easy to install and configure, although it may take some time to find your way through the wealth of options. It is extremely well documented: http://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/documentation/
It is written in Java but supports many tools natively and others through command-line execution, so you can build anything with it that you want. (I use it mostly for Ruby.) It understands the output of many testing tools; if you're not using one of them maybe yours can emulate their output. It's quite extensible; it has a REST API and a plugin API.
It can be configured to build on each commit, or to build all of the commits that arrived in a given time period, or to trigger in other ways. Docs here: http://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/TCD8/Configuring+VCS+Triggers
By default it starts a single build agent and runs one build at a time on that build agent. You can run more build agents for speed. If you don't want to run more than one build on a machine, only start one build agent on each machine.
I dont want that CI server would launch jobs in parallel to avoid
performance issues and crashes in cases of many simultanious jobs.
In buildbot you can limit the number of running jobs in a salve with max_build parameter or locks
As for Buildbot and Python, you may coordinate parallel builds by configuration, for example:
Modeling Parallel Processes: Steps
svn up
configure
make
make test
make dist
In addition, you can also try using a Triggerable scheduler for your builder which performs steps U,V,W.
From the docs:
The Triggerable scheduler waits to be triggered by a Trigger step (see
Triggering Schedulers) in another build. That step can optionally wait
for the scheduler's builds to complete. This provides two advantages
over Dependent schedulers.
References:
how to lock steps in buildbot
Coordinating Parallel Builds with
Buildbot
There is a Throttle Concurrent Builds Plugin for Jenkins and Hudson. It allows you to specify the number of concurrent builds per job. This is what it says on the plugin page:
It should be noted that Jenkins, by default, never executes the same Job in parallel, so you do not need to actually throttle anything if you go with the default. However, there is the option Execute concurrent builds if necessary, which allows for running the same Job multiple time in parallel, and of course if you use the categories below, you will also be able to restrict multiple Jobs.)
There is also Gitlab CI, a very nice modern Ruby project that uses runners to distribute builds so you could, I guess, limit the number of runners to 1 to get the effect you are after. It's tightly integrated with Gitlab so I don't know how hard it would be to use it as a standalone service.
www.gitlab.com
www.gitlab.com/gitlab-ci
To only run tests once for every revision you can do something like this:
build
post-build
check if the revision of the build is in /tmp/jenkins-test-run
if the revision is in the file skip tests
if the revision is NOT in the file run tests
if we ran the tests then write the ID in /tmp/jenkins-test-run