What does specifying tools under "Tool Locations" in Jenkins Node configuration, exactly do?
I wanted to run a mvn command in free style project. I specified the Maven tool and its home under "Tool Locations" and that didn't help. The job failed for not being able to find mvn. I followed this solution and modified the PATH variable to include maven path. That did the trick.
So how exactly does specifying Tool Locations help? Is it just to help users see the tool paths when they visit Jenkins node configuration site?
In Global Configuration, you can configure different tools, such as Maven, JDK, Ant, etc. When you do that, you also provide an installation method (usually an automatic online installer).
Now, on the Job Configuration, when you configure a buildstep using one of the tools, for example Invoke Ant, you will see a drop down. The first option is Default, the next is whatever tool installations that you've configured in Global Configuration.
If you choose Default it will use whatever is already installed on the system by simply executing a command like java, ant, or mvn. Obviously, if those commands are not in the path, it will fail.
If you choose one of the configured options, Jenkins will install it to the system (if not already done), and use that particular version (as opposed to the one you have under path).
This installation will happen on both the master and the slave nodes. If you do not want to use this automatic installation on a particular node, you can manually specify the location of the particular tool in the screenshot you provided.
The above is only useful if in your Job Configuration, you are selecting a specific version of the tool, other than Default, because as already explained: Default will use whatever is already installed on the system (not by Jenkins).
To answer your queries:
So how exactly does specifying Tool Locations help?
Well, not really i would say. It's meant to specify your custom installation directory path for any program that's already setup in your global config page in a different location. If you have configured mvn 2.0 in global settings but wish to use mvn 3.0 on this specific node, then you can use Tool Locations. However, it will work only if the path to the executable is already present in the PATH env variable of the user with which the slave process is running.
Is it just to help users see the tool paths when they visit Jenkins
node configuration site?
Well, yes, you can say that. I am saying so because whenever you specify a custom path, it generally isn't in the PATH of the user with which the process is running. That's true in most of the cases because such binaries don't run independently. They need other dependent modules to work properly otherwise simply dropping a binary in one of the directories that's already present in the PATH would have sufficed. So, it's safe to say that you explicitly have to add the path to executable in PATH to make it work.
If you have noticed the Help (?) section in the Tool Locations, even that doesn't sound very excited about using this feature :P It says:
You can specify the location of certain tools on this node, overriding the global configuration. (You may prefer to use automatic tool installers instead, removing the need to configure each node separately.)
Related
I wonder if it is possible to remove only one build (including artifacts) from job workspace.
I tried to "Delete Build" in Build History but all it does is remove build reference from Build History table. I know I can ssh to a server and delete files from the command line but I am looking for a way to do it from Jenkins web interface.
After installing Workspace Cleanup Plugin I am able to wipe out current workspace but I want to keep my other builds in the workspace.
In your Jenkins instance, to be able to have folder/per build - set flag "Use custom workspace" in your job's settings. Here is a brief help info from the setting description:
For each job on Jenkins, Jenkins allocates a unique "workspace directory."
This is the directory where the code is checked out and builds happen.
Normally you should let Jenkins allocate and clean up workspace directories,
but in several situations this is problematic, and in such case, this option
lets you specify the workspace location manually.
One such situation is where paths are hard-coded and the code needs to be
built on a specific location. While there's no doubt that such a build is
not ideal, this option allows you to get going in such a situation.
...
And your custom directory path would look like this:
workspace\$JOB_NAME\$BUILD_NUMBER ~> workspace\my-job-name\123
where $JOB_NAME will be "my-job-name" and $BUILD_NUMBER is the build number, eq. "123".
There is one nasty problem with this approach and this is why I wouldn't recommend to use it - Jenkins will not be able to reclaim disk space for outdated builds. You would have to handle cleanup of outdated builds manually and it is a lot of hassle.
Alternative approach, that gives you more control, tools and is able to keep disk space usage under control (without your supervision) is to use default workspace settings and archive your build output (files, original source code, libraries and etc.) as a post-build action. Very-very handy and gives you access to a whole bunch of great tools like, Copy Artifact Plugin or ArtifactDeployer Plugin in other jobs.
Hope that info helps you make a decision that fits your needs best.
I also use "General/Advanced/Use custom workspace" (as in #pabloduo's answer) on a Windows machine with something like:
C:\${JOB_NAME}\${BUILD_NUMBER}
Just wanted to add a solution for getting rid of the build job's workspaces.
I use Groovy Events Listener Plugin for this.
Using the plug-in's standard configuration I just use the following Groovy script:
if (event == Event.JOB_DELETED){
new File(env.WORKSPACE).deleteDir()
}
And now the custom workspace is deleted when the build job is deleted.
Just be aware that this would also delete non-custom workspaces (because the event is triggered for all jobs on your Jenkins server).
The Jenkins CLI provides the function to export&import single jobs, e.g.:
java -jar jenkins-cli.jar -s http://foo-jenkins.tld:8080 get-job myjob > myjob.xml
java -jar jenkins-cli.jar -s http://bar-jenkins.tld:8080 create-job newmyjob < myjob.xml
Is it also possible / How to backup&restore the configs?
I mean the whole settings:
the system configuration,
the global security configuration,
the credentials,
the global tool configuration,
the plugins configuration (the "HTTP Proxy Configuration" and the list of the installed plugins)
the nodes
the users
is anything missing?
The whole settings at once or maybe even as single backup/restore processes like e.g. MozBackup with its "Components selection"
or eclipse with its "Export Preferences" dialog
There is no simple way to backup/export selected parts of the configuration, since Jenkins configuration data is scattered among
several files (global config.xml, lots of plugin-specific files)
several sub-directories (credentials, nodes) and
some of the files are encrypted (credentials), so you must also backup the encryption keys
The cleanest solution will be to back-up the entire $JENKINS_HOME, and to exclude those parts that you do not want to be part of the backup (e.g., exclude jobs/*/builds). With that you'll end up with a resonable backup size also.
Such a backup must be done on filesystem level, as there's no API to access all those files/data.
Do not rely on thinBackup, as you depend on the plugin maintainers to not miss anything important. E.g., as of version 1.7.4, thinBackup does not backup Jenkins' secret keys, so it's impossible to restore credentials from scratch.
Maybe thinBackup plugin will help you.
The mentioned requirement can be easily achieved using the below plugin
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/JobConfigHistory+Plugin
Below issues will be solved while using this plugin
Config changes are versioned
Config changes can be compared
Config changes can be reverted back
I have a number of Gradle builds that work very well from the command line, from buildship, etc.
However now I am porting them to a Jenkins system. And it is producing some very strange results. I'm pretty much a total newbie to Jenkins, so this may have an easy answer. So far I haven't found it.
I am using the Gradle Plugin for Jenkins, v.1.24 to configure my build in Jenkins. However, Jenkins (at least as I have it configured) organizes its build structure as {jenkins root}/data/jobs/{project_name}/workspace. When code is checked out of source control it is deposited in that directory, not in a directory named {project_name}.
Gradle seems to assume that the directory in which it is running names the project, and when I'm running outside of Jenkins this assumption is true. The name of the project that Gradle sees is the name of the project that was checked out from source control. Project.name is a gettable but not a settable property of a gradle Project. So in the Jenkins case, the archives that gradle builds are named workspace* rather than {project_name}*. It is also named workspace in the repositories it publishes into. I must be missing something very obvious but for the life of me I cannot figure out what it is.
Has anyone grappled with this?
UPDATE - It appears that the problem is that the people who designed my Jenkins instance knew nothing about Gradle. The {jenkins root}/data/jobs/{project_name}/workspace layout that I described above is not required by Jenkins, but apparently was felt to be useful for some reason in some other, non-Gradle context. So the question becomes, where is the project layout set up in the Jenkins configuration - OR - can Gradle be modified somehow to assume a different project layout/naming strategy.
Set Manage Jenkins → Configure System → Advanced... (the one right at the top) → Workspace Root Directory: ${JENKINS_HOME}/workspace/${ITEM_FULLNAME}.
The inline help:
Specify where Jenkins would store job workspaces on the master node. (It has no effect on builds run on slaves.) This value can include the following variables.
${JENKINS_HOME} — Jenkins home directory.
${ITEM_ROOTDIR} — Root directory of a job for which the default workspace is allocated.
${ITEM_FULL_NAME} — '/'-separated job name, like "foo/bar".
Changing this value allows you to put workspaces on SSD, SCSI, or even ram disks. Default value is ${ITEM_ROOTDIR}/workspace.
.../jenkins/config.xml
...
<workspaceDir>${JENKINS_HOME}/workspace/${ITEM_FULLNAME}</workspaceDir>
...
Gradle seems to assume that the directory in which it is running names the project
Yes this is gradle's default behavior, but can be easily overridden. If it is just the output artifact name you're concerned about, override the jar name with:
jar{
baseName 'actualProjectName'
}
We have a Code Composer Studio (Eclipse) project that uses CMAKE to generate makefiles and build. The project compiles as expected when the project is manually imported onto the Jenkins slave (Win10 x64) and executed from the command line but fails when the build is handled by Jenkins. The failure always follows the same pattern: a singular letter is dropped from the path of an object file. For example, [Repo directory]/Cockpit_Scaling_and_Exceedance_data.dir becomes [Repo direcory]/Cockpit_Scaling_and_Exceedance_ata.dir and linking fails because it cannot find the referenced object file.
I made sure that there are no differences between the account environment variables and the system environment variables and have also configured the Jenkins Service to use the admin account on the slave instead of SYSTEM in order to get rid of as many differences between Jenkins and the command line as possible.
The project will build successfully using one of our other Jenkins slaves (also Win10 x64), so we know that it's not a Windows 10 issue or a problem with our Jenkins configuration. Since I can't find any differences between the configuration of the two slave machines, I was hoping that someone might be able to suggest somewhere to look for this path issue.
I never found out why the paths to object files were being mangled, but I did get the project to build successfully on the slave via Jenkins. All I did was change all of my system environment variables into user environment variables. I copy-pasted, so I know that the variables themselves did not change.
I have no idea why this corrected this issue as I had inserted a whoami call at the beginning of the build to confirm that Jenkins is indeed running as a user and not System. I guess from this point on all of my environment variables will be specific to a user and not SYSTEM...
EDIT: The problem has returned. I have made no further progress in tracking down the cause behind this issue, but I have found that I do not see this symptom when running the scripts in a bash environment instead of a Windows command prompt. Fortunately for me the scripts have all been written in such a way that they can be run in both environments, so I have had my coworkers use bash instead for them.
I am trying to use Jenkins to compile my MSBuild project created with Delphi. I have the MSBuild plugin installed into Jenkins and configured. I'm choosing the specific configuration for my build job.
I have set all the environmental variables in Jenkins that are required by the Delphi compiler (from rsvars.bat for you Delphi types.)
The project compiles just fine on the command line. If I do it on the command line, MSBuild reports a nice big fat PATH (the correct one) as part of the command line it uses to call the Delphi compiler.
However, when I try to use it with Jenkins, the result is quite different:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\RAD Studio\8.0\bin\dcc32.exe -$D- -$L- -$Y- --no-config -B -Q -AWinTypes=Windows;WinProcs=Windows;DbiTypes=BDE;DbiProcs=BDE;DbiErrs=BDE -DRELEASE -K00400000 HTMLWriterTestApp.dpr
Embarcadero Delphi for Win32 compiler version 22.0
Copyright (c) 1983,2010 Embarcadero Technologies, Inc.
Noet the complete lack of a path, or any other information about were to find what the compiler needs. This information is there when I run from the command line.
Can anyone think of any reason why Jenkins is failing to get the correct PATH information?
Depending on how you run Jenkins, it may not have the full path line that you are used to seeing. For example, if you run Jenkins as a Windows Service and have your USERS PATH variable populated, you won't necessarily have it populated for the SYSTEM user. In this case, modify the Logon Account used by the Service to be your account, rather than a system one.
I have Jenkins running on a server inside Glassfish, running as the local system account, as it was installed, by using a derivation of this blog post, and I was able to get it to work by setting property variables in the "system configuration" (Jenkins Environment Injector Plug-in) in Jenkins. (BDS, BDSCOMMONDIR, FrameworkDir, FrameworkSDKDir etc...)
Then the trick for Delphi to pick up the appropriate path is to send the command line parameter "Win32LibraryPath" to MSBuild. Make sure to escape your double quotes in this parameter in Jenkins or else you will pull out your hair.
I had Jenkins started as windows service and it could not find an SVN command even if I had SVN\bin in my PATH variable for the System user.
It seems that the service uses only the environment variables available at start up time.
So if later on you add some more environment varibales to the Windows System user, they will not be available to the service.
All you have to do is restart the window service and it will pick the new environment variables !
Anything with git pull/ where git commands, which are not executing from Jenkins is because of the path issue in the environmental variables in Windows.
Check the PATH in Environment variables.
Check the same command executes from windows command prompt or not.
If it is executing & Windows is running as slave service, then restart the slave service from services.msc.
Log out and login back to Jenkins.