Executive summary
Continuous integration systems are a vital part of any Agile
team because they help enforce the ideals of Agile
development
Jenkins, a continuous build tool, enables teams to focus on
their work by automating the build, artifact management,
and deployment processes
Jenkins’ core functionality and flexibility allow it to fit in a
variety of environments and can help streamline the
development process for all stakeholders involved
Agenda
Continuous Integration (CI)
What is it?
What are the benefits?
Continuous Build Systems
Jenkins
What is it?
Where does it fit in?
Why should I use it?
What can it do?
How does it work?
Where is it used?
How can I get started?
Putting it all together
Conclusion
References
CI - Defined
“Continuous Integration is a software development practice
where members of a team integrate their work frequently,
usually each person integrates at least daily - leading to
multiple integrations per day. Each integration is verified by
an automated build (including test) to detect integration
errors as quickly as possible” – Martin Fowler
CI – What does it really mean?
At a regular frequency (ideally at every commit), the system
is:
Integrated
All changes up until that point are combined into the project
Built
The code is compiled into an executable or package
Tested
Automated test suites are run
Archived
Versioned and stored so it can be distributed as is, if desired
Deployed
Loaded onto a system where the developers can interact with it
CI - Workflow
Code Regular Continuous Artifact
Repository Interval Build System Executable/
Repository
Package
Testing Results
Source & Tests
Test
Reports
Deployment
Developers
CI – Benefits
Immediate bug detection
No integration step in the lifecycle
A deployable system at any given point
Record of evolution of the project
CI – The tools
Code Repositories
SVN, Mercurial, Git
Continuous Build Systems
Jenkins, Bamboo, Cruise Control
Test Frameworks
JUnit,Cucumber, CppUnit
Artifact Repositories
Nexus, Artifactory, Archiva
Jenkins
Branched from Hudson
Java based Continuous Build System
Runs in servlet container
Glassfish, Tomcat
Supported by over 400 plugins
SCM, Testing, Notifications, Reporting,
Artifact Saving, Triggers, External
Integration
Under development since 2005
http://jenkins-ci.org/
Jenkins - History
2005 - Hudson was first release by Kohsuke Kawaguchi of
Sun Microsystems
2010 – Oracle bought Sun Microsystems
Due to a naming dispute, Hudson was renamed to Jenkins
Oracle continued development of Hudson (as a branch of the
original)
Jenkins – Fitting in
Code Regular Artifact
Repository Interval Executable/ Repository
Package
Testing Results
Source & Tests
Test
Reports
Deployment
Developers
Why Jenkins? Flexibility!
Jenkins is a highly configurable system by itself
The additional community developed plugins provide even
more flexibility
By combining Jenkins with Ant, Gradle, or other Build
Automation tools, the possibilities are limitless
Why Jenkins? Award winning!
InfoWorld Bossies Award, 2011
O'Reilly Open-Source Award, 2011
ALM&SCM, SDTimes 100, 2010, 2011
GlassFish Community Innovation Award 2008
Duke's Choice Award 2008
Why Jenkins? Free/OSS
Jenkins is released under the MIT License
There is a large support community and thorough
documentation
It’s easy to write plugins
Think something is wrong with it? You can fix it!
What can Jenkins do?
Generate test reports
Integrate with many different Version Control Systems
Push to various artifact repositories
Deploys directly to production or test environments
Notify stakeholders of build status
…and much more
How Jenkins works - Setup
When setting up a project in Jenkins, out of the box you have
the following general options:
Associating with a version control server
Triggering builds
Polling, Periodic, Building based on other projects
Execution of shell scripts, bash scripts, Ant targets, and Maven
targets
Artifact archival
Publish JUnit test results and Javadocs
Email notifications
As stated earlier, plugins expand the functionality even
further
How Jenkins works - Building
Once a project is successfully created in Jenkins, all future
builds are automatic
Building
Jenkins executes the build in an executer
By default, Jenkins gives one executer per core on the build server
Jenkins also has the concept of slave build servers
Useful for building on different architectures
Distribution of load
How Jenkins works - Reporting
Jenkins comes with basic reporting features
Keeping track of build status
Last success and failure
“Weather” – Build trend
These can be greatly enhanced with the use of pre-build
plugins
Unit test coverage
Test result trending
Findbugs, Checkstyle, PMD
Jenkins by example – Main Page
The main page provides a summary of the projects
Quick view of
What’s building (“No builds in the queue”)
Build Executor Status (both “Idle”)
Status of the projects
Jenkins by example – Project Status
Project status pages provide more details about a given
project
The status of the last several builds
Charting (depending on plugins)
Dependencies
Jenkins by example – Project Status
Jenkins by example – New Project
Enhancing Jenkins
Jenkins plugin system can enable a wide range of features including (but certainly not
limited to)
SCM
Mercurial, Git, Subversion
Testing
Selenium, Windmill, TestLink
Notifications
IRC, Twitter, Jabber
Reporting
Doxygen, PMD, Findbugs
Artifact Saving
Artifactory, Amazon S3, SCP
Triggers
Jabber, Directory Watchers
External Integration
GitHub, Bugzilla, JIRA
And most importantly – The CI Game
A points based game where developers compete against each other to develop the most stable, well-
tested code
Who uses Jenkins?
Running Jenkins yourself
Jenkins is packaged as a WAR, so you can drop it into whichever servlet
container you prefer to use
Jenkins comes pre-packaged with a servlet if you just want a light-
weight implementation
Native/Supported packages exist for
Windows
Ubuntu/Debian
Redhat/Fedora/CentOS
Mac OSX
openSUSE
FreeBSD
OpenBSD
Solaris/OpenIndiana
Gentoo
Running Jenkins yourself – Updates
Jenkins has two release lines
Standard releases
Weekly bug fixes and features
Long-Term Support releases
Updates about every 3 months
Uses a “Stable but older” version from the standard release line
Changes are limited to backported, well-tested modifications
Letting someone else run Jenkins
There are also cloud-based solutions that can provide a
Jenkins instance
Cloudbees - http://www.cloudbees.com/
ShiningPanda - https://www.shiningpanda.com/
Tying it into Agile
For an Agile team, Jenkins provides everything needed for a
robust continuous build system
Jenkins supports Agile principles by constantly providing
access to working copies of software
Jenkins’ extensibility allows the system to adapt to many
different pre-existing environments
Putting it all together
While an integral part of a CI system, Jenkins is by no means
the only component
In order for a CI system to function, a common repository
for the codebase needs to exist
A database of artifacts needs to exist, so deliveries can be
made at past iterations
The last step in a CI process is the deployment of the
components built
…and none of this matters if the developers don’t use the
system; procedures need to ensure the system is used as
intended
Conclusion
Continuous integration is a necessity on complex projects
due to the benefits it provides regarding early detection of
problems
A good continuous build system should be flexible enough to
fit into pre-existing development environments and provide
all the features a team expects from such a system
Jenkins, a continuous build system, can be an integral part of
any continuous integration system due to it’s core feature set
and extensibility through a plugin system
References
Continuous Integration – Martin Fowler
http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html
Hudson
http://hudson-ci.org/
Hudson Continuous Integration Server
http://www.code-magazine.com/articleprint.aspx?quickid=0906071&printmode=true
The Hudson Book
http://www.eclipse.org/hudson/the-hudson-book/book-hudson.pdf
Jenkins
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org
Monkey Image
http://corrines-corner2006.blogspot.com/2011/09/freebie-monday_26.html
What is Continuous Integration
http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CCNET/What+is+Continuous
+Integration
