I have a fairly complicated Jenkins job that builds, unit tests and packages a web application. Depending on the situation, I would like to do different things once this job completes. I have not found a re-usable/maintainable way to do this. Is that really the case or am I missing something?
The options I would like to have once my complicated job completes:
Do nothing
Start my low-risk-change build pipeline:
copies my WAR file to my artifact repository
deploys to production
Start my high-risk-change build pipeline:
copies my WAR file to my artifact repository
deploys to test
run acceptance tests
deploy to production
I have not found an easy way to do this. The simplest, but not very maintainable approach would be to make three separate jobs, each of which kicks off a downstream build. This approach scares me for a few reasons including the fact that changes would have to be made in three places instead of one. In addition, many of the downstream jobs are also nearly identical. The only difference is which downstream jobs they call. The proliferation of jobs seems like it would lead to an un-maintainable mess.
I have looked at using several approaches to keep this as one job, but none have worked so far:
Make the job a multi-configuration project (https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Building+a+matrix+project). This provides a way to inject the job with a parameter. I have not found a way to make the "build other projects" step respond to a parameter.
Use the Parameterized-Trigger plugin (https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Parameterized+Trigger+Plugin). This plugin lets you trigger downstream-jobs based on certain triggers. The triggers appear to be too restrictive though. They're all based on the state of the build, not arbitrary variables. I don't see any option provided here that would work for my use case.
Use the Flexible Publish plugin (https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Flexible+Publish+Plugin). This plugin has the opposite problem as the parameterized-trigger plugin. It has many useful conditions it can check, but it doesn't look like it can start building another project. Its actions are limited to publishing type activities.
Use Flexible Publish + Any Build Step plugin (https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Any+Build+Step+Plugin). The Any Build Step plugin allows making any build action available to the Flexible Publish plugin. While more actions were made available once this plugin was activated, those actions didn't include "build other projects."
Is there really not an easy way to do this? I'm surprised that I haven't found it and even more surprised that I haven't really seen any one else trying to do this? Am I doing something unusual? Is there something obvious that I am missing?
If I understood it correct you should be able to do this by following these Steps:
First Build Step:
Does the regular work. In your case: building, unit testing and packaging of the web application
Depending on the result let it create a file with a specific name.
This means if you want the low-risk-change to run afterwards create a file low-risk.prop
Second Build Step:
Create a Trigger/call builds on other projects Step from the Parameterized-Trigger
plugin.
Entery the name of your low-risk job into the Projects to build field
Click on: Add Parameter
Choose: Parameters from properties File
Enter low-risk.prop into the Use properties from file Field
Enable Don't trigger if any files are missing
Third Build Step:
Check if a low-risk.prop file exists
Delete the File
Do the same for the high-risk job
Now you should have the following Setup:
if a file called low-risk.prop occurs during the first Build Step the low-risk job will be started
if a file called high-risk.prop occurs during the first Build Step the high-risk job will be started
if there's no .prop File nothing happens
And that's what you wanted to achieve. Isn't it?
Have you looked at the Conditional Build Plugin? (https://wiki.jenkins.io/display/JENKINS/Conditional+BuildStep+Plugin)
I think it can do what you're looking for.
If you want a conditional post-build step, there is a plugin for that:
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Post+build+task
It will search the console log for a RegEx you specify, and if found, will execute a custom script. You can configure fairly complex criteria, and you can configure multiple sets of criteria each executing different post build tasks.
It doesn't provide you with the usual "build step" actions, so you've got to write your own script there. You can trigger execution of the same job with different parameters, or another job with some parameters, in standard ways that jenkins supports (for example using curl)
Yet another alternative is Jenkins text finder plugin:
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Text-finder+Plugin
This is a post-build step that allows to forcefully mark a build as "unstable" if a RegEx is found in console text (or even some file in workspace). So, in your build steps, depending on your conditions, echo a unique line into console log, and then do a RegEx for that line. You can then use "Trigger parameterized buids" and set the condition as "unstable". This has an added benefit of visually marking the build different (with a yellow ball), however you only have 1 conditional option with this method, and from your OP, looks like you need 2.
Try a combination of these 2 methods:
Do you use Ant for your builds?
If so, it's possible to do conditional building in ant by having a set of environment variables your build scripts can use to conditionally build. In Jenkins, your build will then be building all of the projects, but your actual build will decide whether it builds or just short-circuits.
I think the way to do it is to add an intermediate job that you put in the post-build step and pass to it all the parameters your downstream jobs could possibly need, and then within that job place conditional builds for the real downstream jobs.
The simplest approach I found is to trigger other jobs remotely, so that you can use Conditional Build Plugin or any other plugins to build other jobs conditionally.
Related
I have a declarative pipeline that executes almost regularly.
Upon specific condition (evaluated during the job run) I'd like to keep the job longer than usual.
Usual runs I keep for one week.
If condition 1 is true I want to keep the build for up to a month.
If condition 2 is true, I want to keep the build for up to six months.
Can Jenkins do something like that out of the box, or can it do it by adding some plugin?
So I found a solution to this job: Jenkins out of the box cannot do what I was searching for. However Jenkins can run plugins. Not finding any plugin that would satisfy my need I started creating my own. Here are the highlevel steps if someone wanted to do the same:
follow the Jenkins Plugin development tutorial. From that you have a plugin with a build step and a build action
modify the build action to store the information about the two conditions, or even better the resulting keep period.
modify the build step so the information can be set from freestyle builds or pipeline steps.
create a BuildDiscarder that reads the information from the action and honors it before triggering a delete
i am new to Jenkins , i need to execute one job that run's another multiple jobs in parallel were it should not stop even if one job fails.
i am not sure how to achieve it. After googling i can achieve by 3 ways Multi-Job plugin , Pipeline multiple Jenkins jobs , Build after other projects , Build Flow Plugin.
can any body please provide me the correct way.
Update : i am trying to achieve this using the pipeline plugin , can any body suggest me were it was correct choice ?..Please suggest!..
We use the Parameterized Trigger Plugin to do this.
In your build configuration add a Trigger/call builds on other projects build step. Add the names of the builds you want to trigger as a comma separated list and make sure that the Block until triggered projects finish their builds box is unchecked. Your build will trigger each of the listed builds, however note that your parent build won't wait for them to finish it will just trigger them and then perform the rest of it's buildsteps so if you have buildsteps.
If you do want to wait then check the block until triggered builds finish box, but set the options for when to fail the build, build step or mark the build as unstable appropriately.
If you need to pass parameters to the jobs you can add parameters using this plugin. If your downstream jobs need different parameters for different jobs you can click the add trigger button which adds another project to build where you can specify different options.
If these other jobs are follow up jobs to the current job and you don't need to wait for them to finish you can also achieve what you want to do by using the post build action build other projects, but again this occurs after the current job and you won't be able to use the results.
can any body please provide me the correct way.
I wouldn't approach using Jenkins with a "one correct way" mentality. Often times the requirements of your build will dictate which method or plugin you use in your build configurations.
The job can start other jobs via the jenkins api.
updated Answer : i used pipeline plugin to achieve my task and tuffwer was right to if u have paramaterized trigger plugin!..
I've a Jenkins job I want to keep running all the time. When a build is ending, I want to immediately trigger another build. How can I do that?
Thanks, Omer
There are two different job configurations for that:
Build Triggers -> Build after other projects are built
Add a post-build action Build other projects
In both cases, you can enter your own Project, so it'll be triggered again every time a build is completed. You can also specify if this should be done only while the project is stable.
There is however one (probably more) drawback in this approach, which is that it'll create enormous overview pages, where all build triggers are listed:
So i'd recommend to do something else and for example use the Jenkins API to trigger a new build. There are many ways to do that, one simple example is adding a build step Execute shell and do something like:
curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/job/$JOB_NAME/build
If you have configured the Jenkins URL, you could also use $JOB_URL. You can also add post parameters to trigger a parameterized build.
I'm using Jenkins to build a number of client libraries to my system, each one targeting a different language. My configuration consists of a number of distinct build steps, one for each language, building and/or testing the library.
Right now, a breaking change in the system will cause the first build step to fail, and no other build step ever gets run, which is very inconvenient. I need to run all build steps, so that I can see all resulting errors.
One alternative would be for a configuration to exist to tell jenkins not to abort latter build steps if earlier ones fail. I didn't find any such thing, but maybe there is.
Another alternative I thought of was to trigger each language as a separate build, but then I have to tie them all up for my post build steps, and I'm not sure how to do that.
And, of course, there might be something I'm missing.
Any of the above would solve my problem. So, what should I do, and how do I do it?
The Multijob Plugin is what you are looking for. I use this plugin a lot. Take a look at their screenshots - You can specify three options on how to mark a Phase(a Phase can have multiple jobs) as successful
when the Phase Job's build was successful
even if the Phase Job's build was unstable
even when the Phase Job's build failed - this is what you need
In your case, you can create a Multijob Job that has one phase for each 'client library'. And add your respective 'client library' jobs into their Phrases. So if you have 10 'client library' jobs then you will end up having 10 Phases (one for each) in this MutliJob. And don't forget to set the 'Mark phase as successful when phase jobs' statuses are' as 'Complete (always continute)'
I usually don't prefer using Downstream Jobs for this purpose, because, there is no nice UI in Jenkins to look at the whole build flow in a single page. Ofcourse there is this Build Pipeline Plugin that shows each and every build flow status. You may choose the right plugin based on your need.
To make this work in one job, I think you need to make the build steps to not fail (return non-zero exit code). Then you need a post-build step which analyzes test results and marks build failed or unstable, if needed.
You may need to write a wrapper script to do the build, such as simple .BAT or shell script, which has exit 0 as last line, after running the build/test actions.
Example of a post-build action which does this kind of test result processing is Publish JUnit test result report.
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