Presentation given at Stockholm JAM September 2018

1. The state of Jenkins pipelines
or do I still need freestyle jobs?
Stockholm JAM
September 2018

2. This talk is not… or at least trying not to be

3. Back in the days...

4. Downstream, join plugin, jobdsl plugin (2009)

5. Build flow plugin (2012)

6. Meanwhile… (2011-2012)

7. Difference
● Hosted
● Almost no server configuration (web hooks mess, workers etc)
● YAML/Declarative pipelines
● Stored together with code
● By default do not have SCM block
● Always triggered by SCM (or SCM related - like PR) event

8. Workflow -> Pipelines -> Jenkinsfile (2014)

9. What was different
● Imperative
● Groovy and DSL
● Resumable
● Pain - plugins support, security, nonCPS
● Burden of legacy
● Eventually declarative pipelines. Kind of
● Visualization mess
● Shared libraries
● Multibranch

10. Where are we today?
● Multibranch/GitHub
● Most of the plugins supported
● Good documentation
● Declarative pipeline… if you don’t go scripted
● Visualisation kind of works… if you don’t go scripted
● Possibly YAML-based pipelines
https://jenkins.io/blog/2018/06/15/simple-pull-request-plugin/
● Still no possibility to restart pipeline from certain point
https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-33846

11. Where would I still go freestyle or scripted?
● Simple utility jobs unrelated to CI/CD of the target - stuff that you don’t put to
the Jenkinsfile
● Conditional stages (think test/build avoidance)
● Complex workflow with the need to restart the flow from the certain point
● Want to avoid to resuming of the pipeline after restart and do not want to set
org.jenkinsci.plugins.workflow.job.properties.DisableResumeJobProperty

12. Things to look into
● Jenkins X
● Jenkins Configuration As Code

14. jenkins:
systemMessage: "Welcome to the demo setup for Jenkins Configuration as Code plugin.
For more information look in the official repo with our demo setup:
https://github.com/Praqma/praqma-jenkins-casc"
agentProtocols:
- "JNLP4-connect"
securityRealm:
local:
allowsSignup: false
users:
- id: demoAdmin
password: ${adminpw:-passw0rd}
authorizationStrategy:
globalMatrix:
grantedPermissions:
- "Overall/Read:anonymous"
- "Job/Read:anonymous"
- "View/Read:anonymous"
- "Overall/Administer:authenticated"
crumbIssuer: "standard"
credentials:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Praqma/praqma-jenkins-casc/master/jenkins.yaml