Jenkins Configuration as Code

Buttle Your Code

GUI

JCasC is intended to configure Jenkins without a GUI; however, when Jenkins is already running, you might need an immediate configuration deployment. When you install JCasC, you can find one more entry in the Jenkins configuration (Figure 1). (This view is also available from the https://jenkins.url/configuration-as-code/ URL.)

Figure 1: Panel for reloading an existing JCasC configuration or uploading a new one.

In this panel you can find (1) the source of the currently loaded configuration, with (2) an option to load other YAMLs. Keep in mind that on a Jenkins restart, if you have exported CASC_JENKINS_CONFIG, it will be used instead of the value inserted here. Two more actions (3) reload an existing configuration, which obviously reloads a setup from a known path, and (4) generate a single YAML file, which should be as close as possible to the configuration for your Jenkins. This setup is far from perfect; as the warning states, it should be "used for inspiration" for your final configuration.

Summary

Setting up Jenkins is a complex process, because both Jenkins and its plugins require tuning and configuration, with dozens of parameters to set within the Manage Jenkins section of the Jenkins user interface. JCasC simplifies the entire configuration with the use of human-friendly, easy-to-read YAML syntax. Without any manual steps, this configuration can be validated and applied to a Jenkins master in a fully reproducible way, without any downtime. With JCasC, setting up a new Jenkins master will become a no-brainer.

Infos

Jenkins project: https://jenkins.io/
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode
Jenkins plugin repository: https://github.com/jenkinsci/configuration-as-code-plugin/tree/master/demos

The Author

Tomasz "Majkel" Szandala is a PhD student at the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (Poland) and a DevOps engineer at NOKIA Wroclaw. He enjoys embracing and improving new open source tools and playing the not-so-dead game Heroes of the Storm ;-).

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