Build Pipeline Plugin

Overview

Continuous Integration has become a widely adopted practice in modern software development. Jenkins & Hudson are great tools for supporting Continuous Integration.

Taking it to the next level: Continuous integration can become the centerpiece of your development pipeline, orchestrating the promotion of a version of software through quality gates and into production. By extending the concepts of CI you can create a chain of jobs each one subjecting your build to quality assurance steps. These QA steps may be a combination of manual and automated steps. Once a build has passed all these, it can be automatically deployed into production.

In order to better support this process, we have developed the Build Pipeline Plugin. This gives the ability to form a chain of jobs based on their upstream\downstream dependencies. Downstream jobs may, as per the default behaviours, be triggered automatically ,or by a suitable authorised user manually triggering it.

You can also see a history of pipelines in a view, the current status and where each version got to in the chain based on it's revision number in VCS.

We'd love to hear about your experience using it or any enhancement suggestions - please let us know:

• Twitter: @CentrumSystems
• Email: build-pipeline@centrumsystems.com.au

Screenshots

The Pipeline View

Pipeline Legend

Configuration

View Configuration

1. Install the plugin using the Hudson\Jenkins update centre and restart.
2. Create a view of the new type "Build Pipeline View". Note: it doesn't take you directly to it's configuration page
3. To get to the configuration options, you must go to the configuration page directly. E.g. http://localhost:8080/view/new-view/configure (if your view happens to be called "new-view")
   
4. The below outlines what each interesting parameter controls

   Build Pipeline View Title	Gives a title to the page that displays the view
   Select Initial Job	This is the first job in the chain. It will traverse through the downstream jobs to build up the entire pipeline
   No of Displayed Builds	The number of historical builds to be displayed on a page

Manual downstream build step configuration

In order to make the next build in the chain manual, check the "require manual build execution" checkbox in the Post Build action section of the job configuration.

Automated downstream build step

To add a build step that will trigger automatically upon the successful completion of the previous one, use one of the following mechanisms.

• Project Build Trigger
• Build Other Projects Post Build action

Source Code

Commercial Support

Are you facing these challenges as you try to meet your delivery commitments?

• It takes a long time for projects or new development resources to become productive.
• Inability to scale resources or development partners to meet business demands.
• Inconsistent quality of software deliverables across project teams or suppliers.
• Error prone manual build processes which are difficult to scale
• Inconsistent application of tools and processes resulting in key resource dependencies.
• Dependency on hero factor in software deployments – asking too much of individuals to successfully implement software.
• Uncertainty around the impact of change
• Lack of visibility of the quality or status of change until late in the delivery lifecycle.
• Spiralling costs of change due to ever increasing technical debt

Centrum have developed an offering we call Software Delivery Mastery (SDM). We can help in the following areas:

• Software build process
• Continuous integration
• Deployment automation
• Automated inspection and testing
• Environment provisioning and configuration management
• Project inception / developer on-boarding.

For information about how we can help you please contact us or visit www.centrumsystems.com.au