Jenkins Pipeline Tutorial For Beginners

Jenkins pipeline as code is a concept of defining Jenkins build pipeline in Jenkins DSL/Groovy format. This article covers the key concepts involved in writing Jenkins pipeline as code using declarative syntax.

Jenkins Pipeline Tutorial

In this Jenkins pipeline tutorial, we will look at the following

1. Types of Jenkins Pipeline
2. Pipeline as code basics
3. Building a basic CI pipeline as code for java app.
4. Building a job from pipeline code present in source code repo.
5. Executing parallel stages in a pipeline
6. Generating pipeline script & directives using Jenkins inbuilt generators.

Types of Jenkins Pipeline

There are two types of Jenkins pipeline code.

1. Declarative Pipeline
2. Scripted Pipeline

In this tutorial, we will focus only on the declarative syntax as it is an advanced version of the scripted pipeline with extensible features. Also, I recommend using the declarative pipeline approach for all your Jenkins use cases. There are a lot of features and benefits you will get from the declarative pipeline approach.

You can check out my article on Jenkins’s multibranch pipeline which uses declarative pipeline as code with Jenkinsfile approach.

Now let’s get started with the pipeline tutorial.

For better understanding, we will create a pipeline for the Java Spring Boot application build using the declarative pipeline as code.

Prerequisites

1. Jenkins master (Check Jenkins installation steps)
2. Jenkins slave node connected to the master (Check Jenkins slave setup guide)
3. Access to Github.com from your Jenkins server. If you are trying out from your corporate Jenkins setup, you can use your organization’s private git repo.

Here us the pictorial representation of the simple build pipeline we are going to build.

Here is the pipeline code for the above workflow. Before setting up the pipeline we will understand what each block means.

Note: Do not worry about the DSL used in the pipeline code. Read the article fully to understand how to generate the DSLs in an easy way.

pipeline {

    agent {
        node {
            label 'SLAVE01'
        }
    }

    tools { 
        maven 'maven3' 
    }

    options {
        buildDiscarder logRotator( 
                    daysToKeepStr: '15', 
                    numToKeepStr: '10'
            )
    }

    environment {
        APP_NAME = "DCUBE_APP",
        APP_ENV  = "DEV"
    }

    stages {
        
        stage('Cleanup Workspace') {
            steps {
                cleanWs()
                sh """
                echo "Cleaned Up Workspace for ${APP_NAME}"
                """
            }
        }

        stage('Code Checkout') {
            steps {
                checkout([
                    $class: 'GitSCM', 
                    branches: [[name: '*/master']], 
                    userRemoteConfigs: [[url: 'https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-petclinic.git']]
                ])
            }
        }

        stage('Code Build') {
            steps {
                 sh 'mvn install -Dmaven.test.skip=true'
            }
        }

        stage('Priting All Global Variables') {
            steps {
                sh """
                env
                """
            }
        }

    }   
}

Now lets understand what each block means.

pipeline {

---<All Pipeline blocks go here>---

}

1. Agent Block: In the agent block you have to mention the slave details where you want to run the pipeline job. It supports both static slaves and docker based dynamic slaves. Here we have mentioned label as “SLAVE01“. It is the name of a slave node.

    agent {
        node {
            label 'SLAVE01'
        }
    }

1. Tools Block: Here you can refer to the tools you have configured in the Jenkins Global tool configuration. We have covered the tool configuration in the next section.

tools { 
        maven 'maven3' 
    }

1. Options Block: It contains all the options required for the job. One example, we have given is “Build Discarder” to rotate the build logs.

options {
        buildDiscarder logRotator( 
                    daysToKeepStr: '15', 
                    numToKeepStr: '10'
            )
    }

1. Environment Block: In this block, you can mention all the required variables for the job which has to be available in all the stages. You can define any number of variables like a key-value pair.

    environment {
        APP_NAME = "DCUBE_APP",
        APP_ENV  = "DEV"
    }

1. Stages: Stages block contains multiple stages.

stages {

---<All Pipeline Stages Go Here>---

}

1. Stage Block: A stage is a subset of stages. Each stage has a steps block.

1. Steps Block: In each steps block you define a set of operations to perform. In the following example, we have shown a workplace cleanup step and echoing a variable we defined in the environment block. What you want to run inside each stage depends totally on your use case.

stage('Cleanup Workspace') {
            steps {
                cleanWs()
                sh """
                echo "Cleaned Up Workspace for ${APP_NAME}"
                """
            }
        }

Now that we have a basic understanding of a minimal pipeline as code, lets practically execute this pipeline on a Jenkins server with a slave node.

Configure Pipeline as Code Job In Jenkins

To execute the pipeline code we have in this article, we need to configure maven in global tool configuration.

Go to Manage Jenkins –> Global Tool Configuration –> Maven –> Maven Installation.

Add a maven configuration as shown below. We are using the tool name as maven3 in the pipeline, so that it refers to the maven under “Global Tool Configuration”.

Note: We have selected “Install Automatically” option, which will download the selected version every time you execute the job.

Creating & Building a Jenkins Pipeline Job

Follow the steps given below to create and build our pipeline as code.

Step 1: Go to Jenkins home and select “New Item”

Step 2: Give a name, select “Pipeline” and click ok.

Step 3: Scroll down to the Pipeline section, copy the whole pipeline code in the script section and save it.

Step 4: Now, click “Build Now” and wait for the build to start.

While the job starts you can view each stage executing in stage view. Here is the screenshot of a successfully executed job. Also, you can the job logs by clicking the blue icon.

If you have the blue ocean plugin installed, you can have a very good UI to view your job status and logs as shown below. Use the “Open in Blue Ocean” from the left to open a job in the blue ocean view.

Executing Jenkins Pipeline From Github (Jenkinsfile)

In the last section, we used the pipeline script directly on Jenkins. In this section, we will look at how to execute a pipeline script available in an SCM system like Github.

Step 1: Create a Github repo with our pipeline code in a file named Jenkinsfile. Or you can use this Github repo for testing. https://github.com/devopscube/pipeline-as-code-demo

Step 2: Follow the same steps we used for creating a pipeline job. But instead of entering the code directly into the script block, select the “Pipeline script from SCM” option and fill in the details as shown below.

1. Definition: Pipeline script from SCM
2. Repository URL: https://github.com/devopscube/pipeline-as-code-demo
3. Script Path: Jenkinsfile

Step 3: Save the configuration and run the build. You should see a successful build.

Executing Jenkins Pipeline Stages In Parallel

There are use cases where you have to execute different stages in parallel because each stage will be independent and does not depend on other steps. Also, running separate stages in parallel will reduce the build times as well.

You can achieve parallelism in Jenkins pipelines as code using the parallel block.

Here is an example stage that contains three parallel stages. It’s like you will have multiple stages inside a stage. You can test this by adding the following code to your existing pipeline.

stage('Environment Analysis') {

            parallel {

                stage('Priting All Global Variables') {
                    steps {
                        sh """
                        env
                        """
                    }
                }

                stage('Execute Shell') {
                    steps {
                        sh 'echo "Hello"'
                    }
                }

                stage('Print ENV variable') {
                    steps {
                        sh "echo ${APP_ENV}"
                    }
                }

            
            }
        }

You can clearly see the parallel execution on blue ocean view.

How to Generate Jenkins Pipeline Scripts?

It is possible to generate Jenkins pipeline scripts?

Yes! you can generate most of the pipeline scripts from Jenkins. Here is how it works.

Jenkins has its own pipeline script generator. You can access the generator on /pipeline-syntax path.

http://<your-jenkins-ip>:port/pipeline-syntax/

You can also get the syntax generator path from your pipeline job configuration as shown below.

Snippet Generator

Snippet generator is used for generating all the scripts that are using inside the stages.

Here is how the generator looks. You can select the required option from the steps dropdown, fill in the required details and generate the script to use in your pipeline.

Declarative Directive Generator

You can use the directive generator to generate all other options in the pipeline. For example, options, parameters, triggers, etc.

Here is an example of generating the agent block.

Conclusion

Adopting pipeline code for all Jenkins workflows will give more control and streamlined pipelines for your CI/CD need. Extending your pipelines with a shared library lets you reuse the pipeline code for all implementations. Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.