Build Triggers

• When the project should be built?
• Generally organizations follow two types of builds
  • Day Builds:
    • Builds done during active development
    • Two options:
      • Build for every change pushed by a developer
      • Build for every one hour or two hours in active working timings
    • We are supposed to give feedback to developer on their commit i.e. if the build is passed, unit tests are passed and code coverage is ok, Static Code Analysis etc..
    • Generally day builds are on a different branch (develop, sprint-n-develop etc…)
  • Nightly Builds:
    • Consolidated build for all the work done by dev team(s) in one day
    • Build once in a day (Scheduled when no development )
    • Build should
      • Build the code
      • Unit tests
      • Static code analysis
      • Code Coverage
      • Run automated system tests and performance tests which require application to be deployed.
        • Tests might be developed using test automation tools like
          • Selenium
          • JMeter
          • Postman
          • Loadrunner
    • Nightbuilds on different branch (RELEASE_v1.0.0_SPRINTn)
• Configuring Day Builds where a build is created for every commit:
  • Day build to be started when any developer pushes the changes to the branch
    
    
    
  • Now make changes and push the changes to the configured branch
    
    
    
    
• Configuring day build where we build periodically (every hour, every two hours) etc…
• Lets work with some cron schedules
  1. Run every day at 11 AM, 7 PM
     
  2. Run for every two hours
     
  3. Run at 11:00 PM
     
  4. Run at 01:00 AM on Saturday and Sunday
     
• Lets configure Jenkins day build to run every hour
  
• If you want to build every hour only when there are new commits then
  
• Refer Here for cron syntax and experimentation
• Lets configure the night build to start at 11:00 PM IST on weekdays
  
  
  

Jenkins Pipelines

• Pipeline as a Code:
  • Build steps expressed in the format of code
  • Jenkins has developed a Domain Specific Language (DSL) based on Groovy Language.
  • Lot of other CI/CD tools are also based on pipelines as a Code
    • Azure DevOps – YAML
    • GitLab – YAML
    • GitHub Actions – YAML
• Advantages of Pipeline as a code:
  • This pipeline will be part of source code repo, i.e. version will be maintained
  • Branch wise build changes can be handled easily
• Jenkinsfile:
  • This is the file in which we define pipelines or build steps
  • Earlier the name was supposed to be Jenkinsfile, now it can be any file
• Pipeline Types:
  • Scripted Pipeline:
    • It is procedure oriented and we can directly use groovy code over here
  • Declarative Pipeline
    • This is declarative and easy to work with
• Lets create a first pipeline for daybuild of gameoflife
  
  
  
• Syntax for scripted pipeline

node('<LABEL>') {
    stage('<Build-stage-1') {
        // build steps
    }
    ..
    ..
    stage('<Build-stage-n') {

    }
}

* Now select Pipeline from SCM in the Pipeline section


* Now build the project

Scripted Pipelines

• Advantages:
  • Generally few sections and less specifications needed
  • Capability to use more procedural code
  • More like create a program
  • More flexibility to do custom operation
• DisadvantageS:
  • More programming required in general
  • Syntax checking limited to Groovy language and environment
  • Looks different from traditional Jenkins model
  • More complex
• Structure:
  
• Example:

node('JDK8') {
    stage('SourceCode') {
        // get the code from git repo on the branch sprint1_develop
        git branch: 'sprint1_develop', url: 'https://github.com/KhajasCICDSamples/game-of-life.git'
    }

    stage('Build the code') {
        sh 'mvn clean package'
    }

    stage('Archiving and Test Results') {
        junit '**/surefire-reports/*.xml'
        archiveArtifacts artifacts: '**/*.war', followSymlinks: false
    }

}

Declarative Pipelines

• Advantages:
  • More structure
  • More capability to declare what is needed
  • Can be generate from Blue Ocean graphical interface
  • Contains sections that map to tradional jenkins
  • Better syntax checking and error identification
• Disadvantage:
  • Still evolving
  • Iterative logic is less supported
• Structure:
  
• Pipeline Steps Reference Refer Here
• Pipeline Syntax reference Refer Here
• Lets add a daybuild trigger to build the jenkins job whenever there is a new commit by polling scm
• Triggers section Refer Here
• JenkinsFile:

pipeline {
    agent { label 'JDK8' }
    triggers { pollSCM('* * * * *') }
    stages {
        stage('SourceCode') {
            steps {
                git branch: 'sprint1_develop', url: 'https://github.com/KhajasCICDSamples/game-of-life.git'
            }
        }
        stage('Build') {
            steps {
                sh 'mvn clean package'
            }
        }
        stage('Archive and Test Results') {
            steps {
               junit '**/surefire-reports/*.xml'
               archiveArtifacts artifacts: '**/*.war', followSymlinks: false
            }
        }
    }
}

* Lets install Blue Ocean Interface via plugins

Open items

• The free style projects creates xml files in Jenkins home directory and there is no version information. How to resolve these.
• Static Source Code Analysis
• Archiving the artifacts in the repository server
• When the build fails we should be sending alerts, How to configure that?