Plugin compatibility tester

& Scm sync configurationFrédéric CAMBLOR

Developper @ 4sh.bordeaux.fr

fcamblor@gmail.com

@fcamblor

http://fcamblor.wordpress.com

Me

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• Developper @ 4sh.bordeaux.fr

– Devop, Team support, Tech lead, App designer

• Jenkins plugins commiter– Not only plugins … we’ll see it in a few seconds…

• Curious about everything related to Java & Web• Ant/Maven & Jenkins CI

• JEE & Spring worlds

• TDD and unit testing in general

• HTML 5 and Javascript ecosystem2

Plugin compatibility tester“Detect backward uncompatibilities between

plugins and jenkins core versions “

I said I’m curious…

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How many Jenkins plugin developers

in the audience ?

Who is using Ruby to develop his plugins ?

Jenkins plugins & Maven

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• Most of plugins are based on Java & Maven– Except for all new Ruby-written Plugins…

• First thing to do after having initiated your SCM

– Configure your pom.xml

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<project><parent>

<groupId>org.jvnet.hudson.plugins</groupId><artifactId>plugin</artifactId><!-- Which version of Jenkins is this plugin built against ? --><version>1.339</version><relativePath>../pom.xml</relativePath>

</parent>

<artifactId>global-build-stats</artifactId><version>1.1-SNAPSHOT</version><name>Jenkins global-build-stats plugin</name><packaging>hpi</packaging>

…

Continuous development

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• Jenkins folks are releasing often

– 1 Release per week

– 1 Long Time Release per season (or maybe longer…)

• How to ensure Jenkins API changes are not

impacting your plugin ?

• How to ensure implementation changes doesn’t

affect your plugin implementation ?

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Possible answers…

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• Align your plugin on every Jenkins release

– You’ll have to release your plugin every week...

– No way !

• Align regularly your plugin over some Jenkins

releases

– For example, LTS

– Drawback : Jenkins users must upgrade their Jenkins

version to follow your requirements

• If you’re on Jenkins v1.409, you won’t see plugin having

Jenkins 1.410 as parent in your update center

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Honestly

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We are all lazy !

– Users (exceptions apart) won’t upgrade frequently

their Jenkins version

• Would imply a regression test harness on their builds

– Plugin commiters won’t release often on the long term8

PCT to the rescue !

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• On each Jenkins release :

– Retrieve Update Center JSON file to have a list of

current plugins (with version)

• For each plugin :

– Download HPI and extract pom.xml from META-INF

– Checkout sources from pom’s <scm>

– Hack pom.xml and change parent to latest jenkins

– Launch compilation and tests from maven

– Gather results and publish it on Google App Engine

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jenkins-pct.appspot.comDémo

What’s coming next

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• Develop new features on GAE app

– Weekly digest subscriptions for plugin commiters

• I can active it automatically thanks to mail located in POM

– WDYT about it ? It can be intrusive…

• Remove XML form of plugin compat tester on

ci.jenkins-ci.org

– Would free memory and 15Go of disk usage

– Need to implement some caching features on GAE

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What’s coming next

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• Integrate new Ruby-coded plugins

– Don’t know if it is even possible

• Try to solve some problems on pom

– If you don’t set the <parent> tag

– Git tags are not present in <scm> tag

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Scm Sync Config Plugin“Synchronize Jenkins configuration files with an SCM”

Overview

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• Main Idea : Jenkins configuration should be part

of the project source code

– You commit your build descriptor (ant, maven etc..)

– Why wouldn’t you commit your jenkins config files ?

• Features

– Everytime a configuration screen is submitted, a

commit message is prompted to the user

– Can be considered as a backup / traceability tool !

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Plugin is still young !

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• Still in alpha (0.0.4)

– Only SVN http/https with simple authentication

– Only a few configuration files are supported

• Global config, per build config, views

– Only a 1-way synchronization (no restore)

• Some pending issues are hard to fix/reproduce

– Maven SCM API is not obvious !

• Help is welcome !

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Roadmap

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• Add Git as a supported SCM

– Should be fast thanks to SCM access abstraction

• Revision view allowing to display configuration

history & diff between them

– Hard since this feature is not in Maven SCM API

• Checkout latest configuration files from SCM

– Would allow to commit job config then import it

– Would allow to have a mirroring jenkins for QA

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Scm Sync Config PluginDemo

License & Copyright

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specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

–Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

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• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

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