I have google test based test suite. Since the tests manipulate the filesystem and do other things that I don't want to be left behind in case of a test crash, besides just not playing nicely with running tests on parallel, I want to run each test case in a new container. I am currently using CTest (aka. CMake test) to run the gtest binary, but I am not very attached to either of these, so if the best option is some other tool, I can accept that.
Can anyone suggest a way to automate this? Right now I am adding each individual test case manually to CTest with a call to docker run as part of the test command, but it is brittle and time consuming. Maybe I am doing this wrong?
You can run your GTest runner with --gtest_list_tests to list all tests.
You can then loop through this list and call your GTest runner with --gtest_filter set to the name of specific test.
The format of the list is a bit awkward to parse though, so need some shell scripting skills to get the actual test names.
Check the exit code of the GTest runner the know whether the test succeeded or failed.
I do not know if this integrates well with CTest.
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.
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.
Long story short,
I was wondering if anyone ever felt the need for (and knows of any implementation of) the possibility of "instantiating" (OO terminology) a parametrized build.
What I mean is treating a parametrized build as a template, from which many "instances" can be generated.
Each instance is supposed to define a different combination of values for the parameters.
The final goal is twofold:
DRY (which is given simply by the parametrized build concept)
having separate build histories / test reports for each instance (otherwise it would be a mess)
the instances would be schedulable directly in jenkins UI (while a parametrized build is not)
The template would then be used only for:
manual builds
changing the config for all of the instances at once
Now, time for some context, as I may be missing something in my overall approach.
You are welcome to point me in the right direction :)
I have a maven project with a suite of selenium tests that I want jenkins to run.
The suite is parametrized: browser, OS, test environment.
So, I can run it e.g. with mvn test -Dbrowser=chrome -Dplatform=win [..].
I want a separate test report for each combination of my parameters.
As a newbie, my first solution was "Copy existing job".
Quick and dirty. But effective.
As you will know, problems arise when you need to make a change to the configuration of the job, and you want to keep in sync all of these copy&pasted jobs.
Then I found the parametrized build feature.
It's very cool (code reuse/maintainability++), but the test report and the build history is shared among all of the actual builds, therefore I can not rely on them for a tidy reporting like "this test is always failing on IE; but it isn't on chrome", and so on.
Thank you very much in advance
I think what you are describing is the matrix project
There are also selenium plugins, I put one together to work with matrix jobs https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Selenium+Axis+Plugin
One lack I can see: you can't build a single combination, as the build btn is present only at the "top level".
Have you tried the Matrix Combination plugin
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Matrix+Combinations+Plugin
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.