http://www.meetup.com/jenkinsmeetup/events/219967721/ slides from Kohsuke & Jesse

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Workflow in Jenkins
Kohsuke Kawaguchi / CTO, CloudBees, Inc.
kk@kohsuke.org / @kohsukekawa
Jesse Glick / Developer, CloudBees, Inc.
@tyvole

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Use Cases: orchestrated activities
• Multi-stage continuous deployment pipeline
• Run part of build with a temporary server
• Blue/green deployment + auto commit/abort
• Parallel tests with automatic sharding
• Automatic per-branch jobs (à la Literate)

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Characteristics
• Complex pipelines involving multiple stages
• Non-sequential logic such as loops and forks
• Long-running builds must survive outages
• Interaction with humans pauses, input
• Restartable builds in case of a transient error
• Reusable definitions to avoid duplication
• Comprehensible scripts one clear definition

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node('linux') {
stage 'Dev'
git 'https://github.com/me/app.git'
sh "${tool 'Maven 3'}/bin/mvn install"
parallel regr: {sh './regression-test.sh'},
perf: {sh './performance-test.sh'}
input 'All set?'
stage name: 'Prod', concurrency: 1
sh './deploy.sh'
}

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Key features (what I already covered)
• Entire flow is one concise Groovy script
– for-loops, try-finally, fork-join, etc.
• Can restart Jenkins while flow is running
• Human input/approval integrated into flow

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More key features
• Allocate slave nodes and workspaces
– as many as you like, when you like
• Standard project concepts: SCM, artifacts, …

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Design: workflow in VCS (1)
• Load the script from another file
• In repository
node {
git 'https://github.com/acme/foo.git'
load 'jenkins.groovy'
}
pom.xml
src
jenkins.groovy
...

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Design: workflow in VCS (2)
• Load the whole script from repository
• Job definition contains no Groovy

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Design: workflow in VCS (3)
• Shared workflow scripts/utilities in Git
• Your job just needs to have this
Git
org.acme.MyWorkflow.run(this)

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Stages (aka James Nord operator)
• Pipeline throttling primitive
• Special semaphore: only newest build may
wait
time
builds
build
build
build
selenium tests
selenium tests
selenium tests
build selenium tests
deployment
deployment
build
build selenium tests deployment
all but
deployment
phase runs in
parallel
deployment still
runs as fast as it can
canceled

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Build #153Build #153

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foo()
void foo() {
try {
sh 'sleep 1h'
} finally {
sh 'rm -rf *.tmp'
}
}

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Resumption of Groovy flows
• Transformed to “continuation-passing style”
• Run on custom interpreter of Groovy
– on master; includes security checks
• State of program saved at each pause point
• Variables serialized and restored after restart

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Resumed builds to the user
• It “just works”
• (Serializable) local variables restored too
• Shell-like steps survive restart
– Reconnection of slave, too

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Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees
• CloudBees’ value-added Jenkins distro
– Support & additional plugins
• Resume from checkpoint
– Can pick up artifacts from original build
– No need to rerun earlier expensive steps
• Visualization
– “Stage” view of pipelines
– More planned later
• Templates
– Define script in template, use attributes

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Demo

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Still to come
• more plugin integrations
• lots of little RFEs & bugs
• easier script syntax, editing
• workspace management
• multibranch projects?
• matrix project equivalent?
• much more, tracked in JIRA

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Status
• Open for contribution
• github.com/jenkinsci/workflow-plugin
• 1.3 current release
• Requires Jenkins 1.580.x+ today
• Under active development

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Summary
• Simplifies complex orchestration
• Define everything in single job
• Workflow as Groovy code
• Survives JVM loss, and even restartable
• Extensible
• github.com/jenkinsci/workflow-plugin

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Design: flows
• persistent record of execution
• directed acyclic graph of nodes
• some nodes represent one step
• others indicate block start/stop structure
• nodes may have associated metadata
– console log fragment contributes to main log
• pluggable visualizations for different views

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Design: steps
• standalone API for asynchronous build steps
• context serves as an identifier & callback
– also offers logger, build, workspace, &c.
• support for block-structured steps
– invoke body 0+ times with revised context
• standard step for “durable” shell/batch scripts
• standard steps for SCMs (git, svn, other)
– >1 SCM per build possible

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Design: interoperability
• run on existing Jenkins slaves
• SCM plugins supported with modest changes
• some existing build steps & publishers
– “build wrappers” coming (1.599+)
• trigger existing jobs
• standard build history, artifacts
• needs Jenkins 1.580.x or later
– features factored out of standard projects