What is a sane development workflow for writing jenkins global pipeline libraries and jenkinsFiles? It's kind of a pain to check in my changes to the global pipeline library and then run a build w/ retry to modify the jenkinsFile, then save the diff if it takes a couple iterations.
Anybody have any recommendations? What do you do?
There is a 3rd-party unit testing framework for Jenkins pipelines: lesfurets/JenkinsPipelineUnit. This also covers shared libraries and allows you to verify the call stack of your pipeline scripts.
Just based on the small amount of context from your question, I can share what I've learned. YMMV.
Source-control the library and make your changes on a branch. You might need another repo to act as a guinea pig to test the new changes - add #branchname to the library declaration in its Jenkinsfile.
Run and test your code on a Jenkins instance running on your local machine. It may not match exactly your production instance, but it's much closer, and therefore faster feedback, to your local. Also, you don't have to push your changes to test - commit locally, test, un-commit, change, commit, test, repeat. When you are done or need to test on the production instance, push.
Use the Script Console as a Groovy scratchpad to test code in. It's missing a lot of plugins/features, but it's great for throwing together some test code to make sure the basics work.
Create small throwaway pipelines to test bits of functionality that you want to iterate quickly on before putting it in a real pipeline, and that won't work in the script console. This lets you focus on the functionality you're building and not worry about the other bits.
Important note: I know of at least one function that doesn't work in the script console, but works fine in a real pipeline: readJSON. It throws an error as if you're doing something wrong but it's just broken in the console. I'm sure there are others.
I'll come back and add more as i think of it.
Related
I am trying to improve our continuous integration process using Jenkins and our source control system (currently svn, but git soon).
Maybe I am thinking about this overly complicated, or maybe I have not yet seen the right hints.
The process I envisioned has three steps and associated roles:
one or more developers would do their job and ultimately submit the code changes for the actual software ("main software") as well as unit tests into source control (git, or something else). Jenkins shall build the software, run unit tests and perhaps some other steps (e.g. static code analysis). If none of this fails, the work of the developers is done. As part of the build, the build number is baked into the main software itself as part of the version number.
one or more test engineers will subsequently pickup the build and perform tests. Some of them may be manual, most of them are desired to be automated/scripted tests. These shall ultimately be submitted into source control as well and be executed through the build server. However, this shall not trigger a new build of the main software (since there is nothing changed). If none of this fails, the test engineers are done. Note that our automated tests currently take several hours to complete.
As a last step, a project manager authorizes release of the software, which executes whatever delivery/deployment steps are needed. Also, the source of the main software, unit tests, and automated test scripts, the jenkins build script - and ideally all build artifacts ("binaries") - are archived (tagged) in the source control system.
Ideally, developers are able to also manually trigger execution of the automated tests to "preview" the outcome of their build.
I have been unable to figure out how to do this with Jenkins and Git - or any other source control system.
Jenkin's pipelines seem to assume that all steps are carried out in sequence automatically. It also seems to assume that committing code into source control starts at the beginning (which I believe is not true if the commit was "merely" automated test scripts). Triggering an unnecessary build of the main software really hurts our process, as it basically invalidates and manual testing and documentation, as it results in a new build number baked into the software.
If my approach is so uncommon, please direct me how to do this correctly. Otherwise I would appreciate pointers how to get this done (conceptually).
I will try to reply with some points. This is indeed conceptually approach as there are a lot of details and different approaches too, this is only one.
You need git :)
You need to setup a git branching strategy which will allow to have multiple developers to work simultaneously, pushing code and validating it agains the static code analysis. I would suggest that you start with Git Flow, it is widely used and can be adapted to whatever reality you do have - you do not need to use it in its pure state, so give some thought how to adapt it. Fundamentally, it will allow for each feature to be tested. Then, each developer can merge it on the develop branch - from this point on, you have your features validated and you can start to deploy and test.
Have a look at multibranch pipelines. This will allow you to test the several feature branches that you might have and to have different flows for the other branches - develop, release and master - depending on your deployment needs. So, when you have a merge on develop branch, you can trigger testing or just use it to run static code analysis.
To overcome the problem that you mention on your second point, there are ways to read your change sets on the pipeline, and in case the changes are only taken on testing scripts, you should not build your SW - check here how to read changes, and here an example of how to read changes and also to prevent your pipeline to build all the stages according to the changes being pushed to git.
In case you still have manual testing taking place, pipelines are pausable which means that you can pause the pipeline asking for approval to proceed. Before approving, testers should do whatever they have to, and whenever they are ready to proceed, just approve the build to proceed for the next steps.
Regarding deployments authorization, it is done the same way that I mention on the last point, with the approvals, but in this case, you can specify which users/roles are allowed to approve that step.
Whatever you need to keep from your builds, Jenkins has an archive artifacts utility. Let me just note that ideally you would look into a proper artefact repository such as Nexus.
To trigger manually a set of tests... You can have a manually triggered job on Jenkins apart from your CI/CD pipeline, that will only execute the automated tests. You can even trigger this same job as one pipeline stage - how to trigger another jobs
Lastly let me say that the branching strategy is the starting point.
Think on your big picture, what SDLC flows you need to have and setup those flows on your multibranch pipeline. Different git branches will facilitate whatever flows you need within the same Jenkinsfile - your pipeline definition. It really depends on how many environments you have to deploy to and what kind of steps you need.
I'm adding to, and maintaining, groovy files to build a set of repositories - previously they were built with freestyle Jenkins jobs. I support some code in shared libraries and to be honest (mainly for DRY reasons) I want to do that more.
However, the only way I know how to test and debug those library files is to push the changes on a git branch. I know about the "replay" trick to test the main Jenkins file. Is there some approach I've missed to do something similar for library code?
If you set up a job to load the shared library instead of relying on a globally set up shared library (you can have both going, for this particular job), then it is possible to hit "replay" and have all your shared library steps show up as editable files.
This can be helpful in iterative development without a million commits.
EDIT: Here's how that looks on an Organization job in Jenkins.
There is the 3rd party Jenkins Pipeline Unit testing framework.
While it does not yet cover all features of pipeline, it is well documented and maintained so that I would consider starting using it (once I revisit our Jenkins setup).
I'm configuring continuous integration with TFS 2012. I have one problem need solve.
I need to exclude some paths from triggering builds.
For e.g. I have:
$/Project1
$/Project2
And I want that after each check-in of $/Project1 - build has been triggered. And it must build both $/Project1 and $/Project2.
But after checking in $/Project2 I don't want to trigger a build for that Build Definition.
In Source Settings of Build Definition are only functions "Active" and "Cloaked", but it isn't what I need.
Thanks a lot in advance.
P.S. The worth solution is to add the comment ***NO_CI*** on check-in. It will be great if there is some other way.
Based on the comments, this boils down to an X-Y problem. You can't do what you want to do, but the reason you want to do it is because you're trying to solve the wrong problem.
You're running the UI tests at the wrong point in your dev-test cycle. UI tests should not run during a build, they should run after a release. A change to your test project should absolutely result in a build.
Someone is developing UI tests against code that's not yet in source control, which makes no sense. If someone is writing tests against code, the code should be source controlled.
I'm guessing that someone is manually pushing uncommitted code out to a dev server, which is being used by someone else to write tests. Don't do this. Use a real release management solution so that as developers write code, each check-in is automatically deployed to a dev/QA environment. Then the folks writing the UI tests will have something to test against. What's the point in writing tests against code that's in such a state of flux that the developer responsible for it isn't even sure it's worth being source controlled? That just results in spending a lot of time rewriting tests as the code evolves.
Assuming you set everything up properly, every commit of the application code will result in the current set of tests being run against the latest commit. Every commit of the test code will result in the new set of tests being run against the existing application code. The two things (application code and test code) should be coupled, and should always build together.
And one last thing, mostly opinion: UI tests are awful and serve very little utility. They are brittle, slow, and hard to maintain. I have never seen a comprehensive UI test suite actually provide value. UI tests are best served as a small set of post-release smoke tests. Business logic should be primarily unit tested, with a smaller suite of integration tests to back it up.
Although this question specifically involves Gradle and Bamboo, it really is a question about any build system (Ant/Maven/Gradle/etc.) and any CI tool (Bamboo/Jenkins/Hudson/etc.).
I was always under the impression that the purpose of a CI build is to:
Check out code from VCS
Run a buildscript (Gradle, etc.)
Deploy a binary (WAR, etc.) to an environment
Hence, all the guts and heavy-lifting (running automated tests, code analysis, test coverage, compiling, Javadocs, packaging, etc.) was all to be done from inside the buildscript.
But Bamboo seems to allow you to break this heavy-lifting out of the buildscript and into Bamboo itself. In Bamboo, you can add build stages and decompose the stages into tasks. Each task is something just as atomic/fundamental as an Ant task.
So it got me thinking: how much should one empower the CI tool? What typical buildscript functionality should be transferred over to Bambooo/CI? For instance, should I be compiling from a Gradle task, or from a Bamboo task? Same goes for all tasks/stages.
For some reason, I view this as the same problem as to whether or not to use stored procedures or put the data processing all at the application layer. What are the pros/cons of each approach?
TL;DR at the bottom
My experience is with Jenkins, so examples will relate to that.
One thing with any build system (be it CI server or a buildscript), is that it should be stable, simple and self-contained so that an untrained receptionist (with printed instructions and proper credentials) could do it.
Ease of use and re-use
Based on the above, one would think that a buildscript wins. Not always. As with the receptionist example, it's about easy of use and easy of reproducibility.
If a buildscript has interdependent build targets that only work in correct order, dependence on pre-supplied property files that have to be adjusted for the correct branch ahead of build, reliance on environment variables that no-one remembers who created in the first place, and a supply of SCM revision numbers that have to be obtained by looking at the log of the commits for the last month... This is in no way better than a Jenkins job that can be triggered with a single button.
Likewise, a Jenkins workflow could be reliant on multiple dependant jobs, each being manually pre-configured before the build, and need artifacts uploaded from one place to another... which no receptionist will do.
So, at this point, a self-contained good buildscript that only requires ant build command to do everything from beginning to end, is just as good as a Jenkins job that only required build now... button to be pressed.
Self-contained
It is easy to think that since Jenkins will (at some point) end up calling at least a portion of a buildscript (say ant compile), that Jenkins is "compartmentalizing" the buildscript into multiple steps, thus breaking away from being self-contained.
However, instead you should zoom out by one level, and treat the whole Jenkins job configuration as a single XML file (which, by the way, can be stored and versioned through an SCM just like the buildscript)
So, at this point, it doesn't matter if the whole build logic is inside a single buildfile, or a single XML job configuration file. Both can be self-contained when done right.
The devil you know
In majority of cases, it comes down to what you know.
Some people find it easier to use Jenkins UI to visually arrange their build workflow, reporting, emailing, and archiving (and for anything that doesn't fit as wanted, find a plugin). For them, figuring out a build script language is more time consuming then simply trying it in UI.
Others prefer to know exactly what every single line of their build script does, and don't like giving control to some piece of foreign code obfuscated by UI.
Both points have merits from all sides Quality-Time-Budget triangle
The presentation
So far, things have been more or less balanced. However:
My Jenkins will email a detailed HTML report with a link to a job page and send it straight up to the (non tech-savvy) CEO. He can look at the list of latest builds, along with SCM changes for each build, linking him to JIRA issues fixed for each build (all hyperlinks to relevant places). He can select the build with the set of changes that he wants, and click "install iOS package" right off his iPad that he just used to view all this information. Meanwhile I can go to the same job page, and review the build logs and artifacts of each log, check the build time trends and compare the parameters that were used between the failing and succeeding jobs (and I didn't have to write any echos to display that, it's just all there, cause Jenkins does that for you)
With a buildscript, even if you piped the output to a file, would you send that to your (non tech-savvy) CEO? Unlikely. But wait, you know this devil very well. A few quick changes and hacks, couple Red Bulls... and months of thankless work (mostly after-hours) later... you've created a buildscript that will create and start a webserver, prepare HTML reports, collect statistics and history, email all the relevant people, and publish everything on a webpage, just like Jenkins did. (Ohh, if people could only see all the magic you did escaping and sanitizing all that HTML content in a buildscript). But wait... this only works for a single project.
So, a full case of Red Bulls later, you've managed to make it general enough to build any project, and you've created...
Another Jenkins/Bamboo/CI-server
Congratulations. Come up with a name, market it, and make some cash of it, cause this ultimate buildscript just became another CI solution a la Jenkins.
TL;DR:
Provided the CI-server can be configured simply and intuitively so that a receptionist could run the build, and provided the configuration can be self-contained (through whatever storage method the CI-server uses) and versioned in SCM, it all comes down to the Quality-Time-Budget triangle.
If you have little time and budget to learn the CI server, you can still greatly increase the quality (at least of the presentation) by embracing the CI-server's way of organizing stuff.
If you have unlimited time and budget, by all means, make your own Jenkins with the buildscript.
But considering the "unlimited" part is rather unrealistic, I would embrace the CI-server as much as possible. Yes, it's a change. However a little time invested in learning the CI-server and how it compartmentalizes or breaks into tasks the different parts of the build flow, this time spent can go a long way to increasing the quality.
Likewise, if you have no time and/or budget, figuring out the quirks of all the plugins/tasks/etc and how it all comes together will only bring your overall quality down, or even drag the time/budget down with it. In such cases, use the CI-server for bare minimum needed to trigger your existing buildscripts. However, in some cases, the "bare minimum" is no better than not using the CI-server in the first place. And when you are at this place... ask yourself:
Why do you want a CI-server in the first place?
Personally (and with today's tools), I'd take a pragmatic approach. I'd do as much as feasible on the build side (clearly better from an automation perspective), and the rest (e.g. distribution of work across machines) on the CI server. Anything that a developer might want to do on his own machine should definitely be automated on the build level. As to the concrete steps you gave, I'd generally check out code from the CI server, and deploy binaries from the build. I'd try to make every CI job look the same, invoking the build tool in the same way (e.g. gradlew ciBuild).
In Bamboo, you can add build stages and decompose the stages into tasks. Each task is something just as atomic/fundamental as an Ant task.
To some extent, this overlap in functionality is natural, as neither build tool nor CI server can assume existence of the other, and both want to provide as complete a solution as possible.
For some reason, I view this as the same problem as to whether or not to use stored procedures or put the data processing all at the application layer.
It's not an unfair comparison, and hence opinions will be as diverse, contextual, and nuanced.
Disclaimer: I'm a Gradle(ware) developer.
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.