Setup & Configure Jenkins for Your Team¶

Install Java¶

The easiest way to install Java is through the apt-get package manager:

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update

Once you added ppa above, you can install java with the following command:

sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

Get base Jenkins Setup¶

You will need to execute a series of the following commands, namely: add the Jenkins signing key, register Jenkins apt sources, update package lists, and install Jenkins package.

wget -q -O - http://pkg.jenkins-ci.org/debian/jenkins-ci.org.key | sudo apt-key add -
sudo echo deb http://pkg.jenkins-ci.org/debian binary/ > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jenkins.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install jenkins

By default, it will install the base Jenkins setup, which is insecure. You will need to go to the host where your Jenkins is installed, for example: http://jenkins-host:8080/.

Navigate to Manage Jenkins (on the left) and choose the “Configure Global Security” item on the page loaded.

Now look below on the Matrix-based security (select it, if it is not selected previously), and make sure Anonymous only has the “Read” right under the View group.

Click Save at the bottom of the page. After the page reloads, you’ll see a login form, but simply ignore that and go to the home page (like, for example, http://jenkins-host:8080/). You’ll see this signup form, and the first signed up account will be the administrator.

The Power of Plugins¶

Jenkins would not be so powerful without plugins. Usually, I install these plugins by default:

• Bitbucket: The BitBucket plugin is designed to offer integration between BitBucket and Jenkins. BitBucket offers a Jenkins hook, but this one just triggers a build for a specific job on commit, nothing more. The BitBucket plugin, like the GitHub plugin, uses the POST hook payload to check which job has to get triggered based on the changed repository/branch.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/BitBucket+Plugin
• bitbucket-pullrequest-builder: This plugin builds pull requests from Bitbucket.org. This is a must-have plugin if you perform QA deploy for each submitted pull request.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Bitbucket+pullrequest+builder+plugin
• build-pipeline-plugin: This plugin provides a Build Pipeline View of upstream and downstream connected jobs that typically form a build pipeline. In addition, it offers the ability to define manual triggers for jobs that require intervention prior to execution, e.g. an approval process outside of Jenkins. Provides nice visualization of the paths & flows.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Build+Pipeline+Plugin
• copyartifact: Adds a build step to copy artifacts from another project. The plugin lets you specify which build to copy artifacts from (e.g. the last successful/stable build, by build number, or by a build parameter). You can also control the copying process by filtering the files being copied, specifying a destination directory within the target project, etc.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Copy+Artifact+Plugin
• credentials: Adds a build step to copy artifacts from another project. The plugin lets you specify which build to copy artifacts from (e.g. the last successful/stable build, by build number, or by a build parameter). You can also control the copying process by filtering the files being copied, specifying a destination directory within the target project, etc.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Credentials+Plugin
• delivery-pipeline-plugin: Visualisation of Delivery/Build Pipelines, renders pipelines based on upstream/downstream jobs. When using Jenkins as a build server it is now possible with the Delivery Pipeline Plugin to visualise one or more Delivery Pipelines in the same view even in full screen.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Delivery+Pipeline+Plugin
• environment-script: Environment Script Plugin allows you to have a script run after SCM checkout, before the build. If the script fails (exit code isn’t zero), the build is marked as failed. Any output on standard out is parsed as environment variables that are applied to the build. It supports “override syntax” to append paths to PATH-like variables.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Environment+Script+Plugin

• git: Supports popular git version control system

• ghprb: This plugin builds pull requests in GitHub. It’s another must-have plugin if your software development life cycle includes deploying pull requests to PR environment to test.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/GitHub+pull+request+builder+plugin
• greenballs: The funniest plugin - changes Jenkins to use green balls instead of blue for successful builds.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Green+Balls
• hipchat: This plugin allows your team to setup build notifications to be sent to HipChat rooms.To enable notifications, add “HipChat Notifications” as a post-build step.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/HipChat+Plugin
• junit: Allows JUnit-format test results to be published. Note: number of tools, including Karma, PhpUNIT & other tools allow to publish test results in a JUnit format. Thus, this is a must-have plugin for unit test flows.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/JUnit+Plugin
• matrix-auth: Offers matrix-based security authorization strategies (global and per-project). This is quite handy if you have shared build server across several teams.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Matrix+Authorization+Strategy+Plugin
• parameterized-trigger: This plugin lets you trigger new builds when your build has completed, with various ways of specifying parameters for the new build.

  You can add multiple configurations: each has a list of projects to trigger, a condition for when to trigger them (based on the result of the current build), and a parameters section.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Parameterized+Trigger+Plugin
• rebuild: This plays nice with the parameterized-trigger plugin. The plug-in allows the user to rebuild a parametrized build without entering the parameters again.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Rebuild+Plugin
• ssh: You can use the SSH Plugin to run shell commands on a remote machine via ssh.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/SSH+plugin
• s3: Allows uploading artifacts to S3 with multiple options.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/S3+Plugin
• throttle-concurrents: This plugin allows for throttling the number of concurrent builds of a project running per node or globally.

  Unfortunately, this is also a must-have plugin for Node (0.10-0.12) projects with NPM - two concurrent npm installs often fail.

  Plugin URL: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Throttle+Concurrent+Builds+Plugin

Plugins are installed using Plugin manager on a Manage Jenkins Section.

Putting Jenkins Behind a Web Server¶

Usually I hide Jenkins behind nginx. A typical configuration looks like the one below:

server {
  listen 443 ssl;
  server_name jenkins.vagrant.dev;

  ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/jenkins_selfsigned.crt;
  ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/jenkins_selfsigned.key;

  location / {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_redirect off;

    proxy_connect_timeout 150;
    proxy_send_timeout 100;
    proxy_read_timeout 100;
  }
  ...
}