I'm slowly replacing traditional jobs with Jenkins pipelines. We've got some jobs which I've previously optimised by only deleting some key files from the workspace of a previous build - thus we end up with incremental builds rather than full ones. FTR this makes our basic builds 3/4 times faster, and I'm keen to preserve it.
I need to delete those files (to simplify real scenario) that contain "cache". I currently use "**/cache" as an include parameter to the Delete Workspace build step. Question: is there something similar already in pipeline steps? I could probably do it using find or similar, but this has to work on Windows too and that has portability implications.
You could use the cleanWS step to clean up certain parts of the workspace. However, it is a plugin you can find here: Workspace Cleanup Plugin.
You can find syntax about a snippet generator for this step at your-jenkins-url/pipeline-syntax/
I've switched away from using cleanWS having used it. Rather I am using the file operations to explicitly delete the files concerned.
The file operations act there and then. The cleanWs acts at the end of a run and can't be relied upon if that run went wrong and did not finish - e.g. syntax error - or that was running a different script.
Related
I have several source code repositories containing various bits of code built by Jenkins, with a one-to-one mapping between Jenkins jobs and source repositories. Separate from these, I have a single repository containing Job DSL scripts for creating/updating the Jenkins jobs that build the other repos. The situation looks something like this:
I had hoped to find a way to store the Job DSL scripts inside the individual source repositories, right alongside the code, and have a single seed job that would be triggered by push notifications to any of the other repositories. Unfortunately, it appears that this is currently not well supported (see the accepted answer to this question). Given that, it seems simplest for now to just leave all the DSLs in a single, separate repository, and let push notifications to that repository trigger reprocessing of the groovy scripts. And it all works fine, more-or-less.
That said, I'm slightly concerned that the seed job—when triggered—re-runs all of the DSL scripts, rather than only those that have actually changed. (I'm honestly not sure whether this is a 'problem', per se, I just worry that it could lead to surprising behavior later on.)
Is there some way I can restructure the seed job so that it only re-runs scripts modified by the commit that triggered the build? Or... is this not worth worrying about?
Job DSL will only update a job if the generated config changes. It compares the generated XML with the existing config to see if an update is necessary. See JenkinsJobManagement.java. So if you do not change jobs manually or run malicious plugins that modify the job's config in the background, there should be no problem when re-running scripts.
And Job DSL reuses the Groovy script engine when running multiple scripts, so the performance impact should be low. See DslScriptLoader.groovy.
So if your scripts have no side effects (e.g. making REST calls or modifying the file system), then it should be no problem to re-run scripts even if unnecessary.
I have a build that's currently using the old build flow plugin that I'm trying to convert to pipeline.
This build can be massively parallelized (many units of work can run on many different nodes) but we only want to extract the source code once at the beginning, preferably with the Pipeline script from SCM option. I'm at a loss to understand how I can share the source extract (which apparently is on the master) with all of the "downstream" nodes that will be used by the pipeline script.
For build flow we extracted to a well-known location on a shared file system and all of the downstream jobs invoked by the flow were passed (or could derive) that location. That always felt icky & I was hoping that pipeline would have solved this problem but I can't find anything to suggest that it has. What am I missing?
I believe the official recommendation for this is to make bundles of the source and then use "stash" and "unstash" to make them available to deeper steps of your pipeline script.
See https://www.cloudbees.com/blog/parallelism-and-distributed-builds-jenkins
Keep in mind that this doesn't do anything to help with line-endings. If you have builds that span OSs with different line endings you either need to make OS-specific stashes, or just checkout to a safe label in each downstream step.
After further research it seems like the External Workspace Manager Plugin does what I'm looking for.
We have several automated build scripts, some of which are run automatically every 2 hours, and some of which are only ever run manually.
If a build script is started manually while another is already running, it can cause...problems. Such as merging untested branches into the production branch.
I'd like to prevent this happening again, and the simplest solution in my mind is to have each build script start by checking that another is not currently running.
Is there a way in ant to directly check if another ant instance/script is currently running?
If not, what's the simplest way to add such a check? My first thought is a file created at the beginning and deleted at the end of a build. I'd prefer a way that handles user-cancelled builds nicely, but it's not necessary. It needs to work if a build succeeded and if a build failed (but was not killed by the user).
If these are separate Ant processes, then I think the only solution is to define a lockfile of some sort that each Ant process needs to acquire before it can continue.
Perhaps the tempfile task could be used for this?
Actually, a sort-of semaphore based on a directory might be better because the tempfile really is a unique tempfile. The first thing your script does is use mkdir to create a shared resource directory name, but it only does this if the directory does not exist.
Upon exit it invokes delete on this shared resource name.
The idea is that the content and name of the directory is meaningless -- it only serves as an "IPC" cooperative locking mechanism.
This isn't particularly elegant, but I think your only other option is to set up a build server that handles scheduled and continuous builds based on various triggers. One that many people use is Jenkins (or has it been renamed?)
[Update]
Perhaps Do I have a way to check the existence of a directory in Ant (not a file)? would do the trick?
To be honest, this approach may work in the short term, but it just moves the problem around. Instead of resetting unit test results you'll be removing lockfiles by hand to get builds working again. My advice is to set up a CI build system, but I recognize this is a fair amount of work (and introduces a whole different set of future problems.)
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.
Is it possible to set the build result for a build after that build is complete?
I could not find any plugins that do this already, and I was considering writing my own, but I wanted to see if this was even possible before going down that path.
(I have looked at existing code and how the "Fail The Build" plugin works as an example, but my understanding of the Jenkins code base is not advanced enough to understand what all the possibilities are.)
Use case: we have a build pipeline, and near the end of the pipeline there is a deploy-to-qa step that deploys the artifact to a QA environment. We have automated tests before this step to try to catch any problems with the artifact, but our test coverage is not very high in some areas so bugs could still slip through the cracks. I'd like to have the ability to mark a deploy-to-qa build as FAILED after the fact, to denote that that particular pipeline was invalid and is not a candidate for production release. (Basically the same as this Build Pipeline Plugin issue)
After some more investigation in the code, I believe that this is not possible.
From hudson.model.Run:
public void setResult(Result r) {
// state can change only when we are building
assert state==State.BUILDING;
// snip
...
}
So the build result cannot change except when in "building" state.
I could try to muck with the lastSuccessful and lastStable symlinks (as is done with the delete() function in hudson.model.AbstractBuild), but then those would be reset as soon as Jenkins reloaded the build results from jobs/JOBNAME/builds/.
I have an untested suggestion: Make a parametrized build, where the parameter determines if build will fail or not (for example simple bat / shell script testing the parameter from the environment variable it sets, and doing exit 0 or exit 1). This assumes that build pipelines manually triggered step will ask the parameters, and not use default values.
If it does not support interactive build parameters, then some other way is needed to tell this extra build step wether it should fail or not. Maybe editing upstream build description or display name to indicate failure, and then allowing build pipeline to continue to this extra build step, which probably has to use system groovy script to dig out upstream build description or display name.
I have seen several debates on this topic previously, and the outcome was always that it is theoretically possible to do so, but the codebase is not designed to allow this and it would have to be a very hacky workaround.
It's also been said that this is a bad practice in general, although I don't remember what the argument against it was.
I am facing the same requirement. I haven't found an appropriate plugin, changing the build status is not just a flag but has other impacts on links (eg latest successful build etc). So instead of changing the status of the build I looked for a possibility for qualifying the build. The Promoted Builds Plugin apply flags to build to define e.g. different quality stages. Build promotions can be performed manually or based on e.g. downstream project successful builds. Any successful build can be qualified, based on the promotion additional build and post build actions can be executed, e.g tagging or archiving.
Actually I was able to do it by changing the build.xml manually to <result>FAILURE</result>.
I've then played a little bit with mklink to create some symbolic links and also renamed the lastSuccessfulBuild to lastFailedBuild and it worked. If you are allowed to access the filesystem from within a Jenkins PlugIn, then it is possible to write one.
In case you are fine to delete the current build and start the same build using a version number and setting the next BUILD_NUMBER to the deleted one, then you could use this plugin to tell it to fail instead of succeed:
Fail The Build Plugin