Jenkins Configuration as Code

Buttle Your Code

Jenkins is one of the most popular continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) tools in the DevOps world. During its lifetime, its configuration process has evolved: A complex GUI wizard for configuration appeared, DSL jobs and pipeline plugins debuted, and more and more Groovy scripts for initializing startup popped up around the Internet. From my point of view, the weakest elements were those initializing scripts, because each company – or even teams in the same company – implemented them differently. Today, thanks to Jenkins Configuration as Code (JCasC), you can fine tune both Jenkins and its plugins with one common approach through the use of easily understandable YAML files.

Jenkins Startup

When Jenkins starts, it reads all command-line parameters and some environmental variables and executes all *.groovy files in lexical order under the ${JENKINS_HOME}/init.groovy.d/ directory; therefore, administrators must learn the Groovy language to prepare scripts. Groovy is a nice, scriptable offspring of Java that lacks its elder's private variables and methods and is used in many Java virtual machine (JVM) systems. In Jenkins, Groovy can be used to modify virtually any aspect of a given CI instance. However, as stated above, you have to be able to write and maintain complex scripts in "yet another language."

Thanks to the JCasC authors, most of the initializing Groovy code becomes obsolete and replaceable by far more readable and maintainable YAML files.

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