Correct way to structure a jenkins groovy pipeline script - jenkins

Question

I wrote a pipeline that works with jeknins but as a newbie to jenkins scripting I've a lot of stuffs that are not clear to me, Here's the whole script, I'll express the issues below
SCRIPT:
node()
{
def libName = "PROJECT"
def slnPath = pwd();
def slnName = "${slnPath}\\${libName}.sln"
def webProject = "${slnPath}\\PROJECT.Web\\PROJECT.Web.csproj"
def profile = getProperty("profiles");
def version = getProperty("Version");
def deployFolder = "${slnPath}Deploy";
def buildRevision = "";
def msbHome = "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio\\2017\\Professional\\MSBuild\\15.0\\Bin\\msbuild.exe"
def msdHome = "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\IIS\\Microsoft Web Deploy V3\\msdeploy.exe"
def nuget = "F:\\NugetBin\\nuget.exe";
def assemblyScript = "F:\\Build\\Tools\\AssemblyInfoUpdatePowershellScript\\SetAssemblyVersion.ps1";
def webserverName ="192.168.0.116";
def buildName = "PROJECT";
def filenameBase ="PROJECT";
stage('SCM update')
{
checkout([$class: 'SubversionSCM', additionalCredentials: [], excludedCommitMessages: '', excludedRegions: '', excludedRevprop: '', excludedUsers: '', filterChangelog: false, ignoreDirPropChanges: false, includedRegions: '', locations: [[credentialsId: '08ae9e8c-8db8-43e1-b081-eb352eb14d11', depthOption: 'infinity', ignoreExternalsOption: true, local: '.', remote: 'http://someurl:18080/svn/Prod/Projects/PROJECT/PROJECT/trunk']], workspaceUpdater: [$class: 'UpdateWithRevertUpdater']])
}
stage('SCM Revision')
{
bat("svn upgrade");
bat("svn info \"${slnPath}\" >revision.txt");
for (String i : readFile('revision.txt').split("\r?\n"))
{
if(i.contains("Last Changed Rev: "))
{
def splitted = i.split(": ")
echo "Revisione : "+ splitted[1];
buildName += "." + splitted[1];
currentBuild.displayName = buildName;
buildRevision += version + "." + splitted[1];
}
}
}
stage("AssemblyInfo update")
{
powerShell("${assemblyScript} ${buildRevision} -path .")
}
stage('Nuget restore')
{
bat("${nuget} restore \"${slnName}\"")
}
stage('Main build')
{
bat("\"${msbHome}\" \"${slnName}\" /p:Configuration=Release /p:PublishProfile=Release /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:Profile=Release ");
stash includes: 'Deploy/Web/**', name : 'web_artifact'
stash includes: 'PROJECT.Web/Web.*', name : 'web_config_files'
stash includes: 'output/client/release/**', name : 'client_artifact'
stash includes: 'PROJECT.WPF/App.*', name : 'client_config_files'
stash includes: 'PROJECT.WPF/Setup//**', name : 'client_setup'
}
stage('Profile\'s customizations')
{
if (profile != "")
{
def buildProfile = profile.split(',');
def stepsForParallel = buildProfile.collectEntries {
["echoing ${it}" : performTransformation(it,filenameBase,buildRevision)]
}
parallel stepsForParallel;
}
}
post
{
always
{
echo "mimmo";
}
}
}
def powerShell(psCmd) {
bat "powershell.exe -NonInteractive -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command \"\$ErrorActionPreference='Stop';[Console]::OutputEncoding=[System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8;$psCmd;EXIT \$global:LastExitCode\""
}
def performTransformation(profile,filename,buildRevision) {
return {
node {
def ctt ="F:\\Build\\Tools\\ConfigTransformationTool\\ctt.exe";
def nsiTool = "F:\\Build\\Tools\\NSIS\\makensis.exe";
def slnPath = pwd();
unstash 'web_artifact'
unstash 'web_config_files'
def source = 'Deploy/Web/Web.config';
def transform = 'PROJECT.Web\\web.' + profile + '.config';
bat("\"${ctt}\" i s:\"${source}\" t:\"${transform}\" d:\"${source}\"" )
def fname= filename + "_" + profile + "_" + buildRevision + "_web.zip";
if (fileExists(fname))
bat("del "+ fname);
zip(zipFile:fname, dir:"Deploy\\Web")
archiveArtifacts artifacts: fname
//Now I generate the client part
unstash 'client_artifact'
unstash 'client_config_files'
unstash 'client_setup'
def sourceClient = 'output/client/release/PROJECT.WPF.exe.config';
def transformClient = 'PROJECT.WPF/App.' + profile + '.config';
bat("\"${ctt}\" i s:\"${sourceClient}\" t:\"${transformClient}\" d:\"${sourceClient}\"" )
def directory = new File(pwd() + "\\output\\installer\\")
if(!directory.exists())
{
bat("mkdir output\\installer");
}
directory = new File( pwd() + "\\output\\installer\\${profile}")
if(!directory.exists())
{
echo " directory does not exist";
bat("mkdir output\\installer\\${profile}");
}
else
{
echo " directory exists";
}
def filename2= filename + "_" + profile + "_" + buildRevision + "_client.zip";
bat("${nsiTool} /DAPP_VERSION=${buildRevision} /DDEST_FOLDER=\"${slnPath}\\output\\installer\\${profile}\" /DTARGET=\"${profile}\" /DSOURCE_FILES=\"${slnPath}\\output\\client\\release\" \"${slnPath}\\PROJECT.WPF\\Setup\\setup.nsi\" ");
if (fileExists(filename2))
bat("del "+ filename2);
zip(zipFile:filename2, dir:"output\\installer\\" + profile);
archiveArtifacts artifacts: filename2
}
}
};
The series of questions are:
I've seen some script where everything is wrapped in a pipeline {}, is this necessary or does Jenkins pipeline plugin paste it?
I really dislike to have all those definitions inside the node and then replicated below.
I don't see inside the Jenkins workflow the parallelism, even if I've 4 executors in idle.
I'm not able to call the post pipeline event to clear the workspace (rigth now It's just en echo

Answer 1

There are 2 types of pipeline. Straight groovy like you have written is referred to as a scripted pipeline. The style that has the pipeline{} block around it is a declarative style pipeline. The declarative tends to be easier for newer Pipeline users and is a good choice for starting out with a pipeline. Many pipelines don't need the complexity that scripted allows.
This is groovy. If you want to declare a bunch of variables, you have to do it somewhere. Otherwise you hard-code those values in your script somewhere. In groovy, you don't HAVE to declare every variable, but you have to define it somewhere, and unless you know how the declaration is going to affect scope, you should just declare them. Most programming languages require some kind of variable declaration, especially when you have to worry about scope, so I don't see that this is a problem. I think it is very clean to define all of the variable values in one place at the top. Easier for maintenance.
At first glance, your parallel execution looks like it should work, but unless I set this up and ran it, it is hard to say. It could be that the parallel parts are running fast enough that the UI doesn't update. You should be able to see in the console output if these are running in parallel.
The post pipeline block is not available in scripted pipeline. That is part of the declarative pipeline syntax. In scripted, to do similar things you have to use try/catch to catch errors and run post-type things.