Applications nowadays need to be created, delivered, and updated regularly. Therefore managing all the applications with proper automation tools and skills is a must. Using automation in the development environment helps to gain flexibility while accelerating the development effort.
Continuous Integration and Continuous Development (CI/CD) have transformed the modern application development process. CI/CD ensures a continuous and automatic flow of modifications in production, delivering software faster and detecting bugs at minimal costs.
Among several CI/CD tools available, developers choose using Jenkins, due to its flexibility, ease of use, powerful plug-ins, and resourcefulness. Jenkins pipelines help in combining CI/CD capabilities in application development automation. In this article, we will learn to integrate CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins effectively. We will begin with what is Jenkins, how it is useful to CI/CD, what are its features, and benefits
What is Jenkins?
Jenkins is an automation server that enables developers to reliably create, test, and deploy applications. It supports (CI/CD) workflows known as pipelines, enabling teams to frequently deliver high-quality applications. Jenkins is increasing its popularity with increasing installations worldwide.
Jenkins provides an automation engine with an extensive plug-in ecosystem that offers integrations with almost any combination of code languages and source code repositories using pipelines to set up a CI/CD environment. Jenkins is written in Java and can also be used with various testing and reporting tools.
Additionally, it can be used with every tool in the DevOps toolchain. Testers can run it on various operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and more. Jenkins is flexible to be hosted on-premise or in the cloud, making it a suitable choice for different types of application development. These flexible features allow Jenkins to fit into diverse infrastructure setups and support all types of development processes.
What is a Jenkins pipeline?
A Jenkins pipeline is a suite of Jenkins features that supports implementing and integrating continuous delivery pipelines into the application delivery process. It is a set of processes linked together to form a processing system.
A Jenkins pipeline automates the repetitive work of handling new code changes that happen continuously and getting them safely to users. This includes building applications, testing, and deploying automatically instead of doing it manually. It breaks the process into stages and automates the repetitive work of taking new code changes and getting them safely to users.
The pipeline feature speeds up application delivery and reduces errors due to manual work, providing visibility into the process to catch issues early. Using domain-specific language (DSL) based on Groovy; helps in turning complicated build processes into a manageable and easy-to-understand script.
What are the stages in a pipeline?
The Jenkins pipeline has four stages. They are checkout, building, testing, and deploying. The checkout stage fetches the source code, which is compiled in the build stage, then runs the tests immediately to check bugs and errors early in the testing stage, and lastly, in the deployment stage, the application is released.
All the stages in the pipeline mentioned above perform in sequence one after the other. It includes taking input, processing it following a set of rules, and then sending the outputs to the stage that follows. If any stage fails it will not move forward to another stage until the previous step is successful.
What is the CI/CD pipeline?
CI/CD means Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. In CI/CD small code changes are made often. With continuous integration developers frequently make changes to the source code in a version control system like Git. With each change, CI automatically runs these tests with a predefined set of steps including build, testing, and merging the code into a shared repository to ensure nothing breaks. In case the tests pass, Jenkins releases new code, and if the tests fail, the changes get rejected. This helps in catching errors early, and quickly.
Making big changes at once makes it longer to test and fix issues. Therefore small changes are way better than releasing big code changes since they are easy to be tested and released faster. In Continuous Delivery, every build that passes all automated tests is delivered to different environments like Dev, Test, and Production.
In short, CI/CD pipelines automate the software delivery process. They enable developers to automate, build, test, and deliver code changes rapidly and reliably. This allows them to get faster feedback in case they break things. They can release features faster to users without sacrificing quality.
Jenkins support for CI/CD
Jenkins manages the entire deployment process, which includes tasks like running a functional test against the source code and executing an entire release. Organizations can now standardize a wide range of deployment procedures using Jenkins.
After the developer configures a task on the Jenkins server, they can repeatedly run it in the same way according to its specifications. Thanks to Jenkins which handles all the work that the developer specifies, including which and when to run.
Earlier releasing the applications developers had to manually specify their deployment methods using the Jenkins Dashboard. Moreover, every Jenkins server has a particular task to perform, hence, updating or moving deployments between servers was a big challenge, as well as the whole process was time and effort-consuming, especially when the task was huge and involved multiple specifications. Fortunately, with the new Jenkins Pipelines, all these issues are addressed easily.
Why developers use Jenkins in CI/CD
DevOps teams mostly work with Jenkins pipelines because they can automate the above four stages. Doing this manually takes lots of time and effort which will affect the quality and release. Using a Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) Pipeline the entire script process can be automated, which as a result increases productivity and saves lots of time for the organization and in delivering quality applications to the end users.
Many organizations use Jenkins to help teams work together and make high-quality applications. In continuous integration and continuous delivery Jenkins lets developers see problems faster, test, and release their code changes automatically and quickly. Additionally, it shows progress, by helping teams work together to test and release code faster. As they all know the status of code changes and tests this allows them to satisfy users with quick fixes and new features.
Tips to use Jenkins
- Jenkins takes effort to set up, but once set up, it automates the process.
- Teams must start with small and then gradually add more as they learn Jenkins.
- Jenkins works best when used by the team as a whole. Because everyone needs to commit code and fix issues right away.
- Being popular open source it can be used with many tools. However, it requires additional training and support and is costly in terms of time and money. However, with some learning and practice, Jenkins can skill many development teams.
Benefits of Jenkins for CI/CD Pipelines
Among the list of benefits of Jenkins, its integration with CI/CD is a huge one. Below are some of the benefits of creating CI/CD with Jenkins.
Plugins and Integrations
Jenkins is highly customizable; it allows automating a lot of manual work by providing several plugins, ranging from cloud to on-premises that extend its functionality and compatibility with various third-party services and technologies.
One such plugin is the LambdaTest Jenkins plugin. Developers can seamlessly integrate Jenkins CI/CD pipeline with LambdaTest. This cloud automation testing platform provides on-demand access to shared computing resources online to automatically and continuously build, test, and deploy applications in different environments.
Integrating Jenkins with LambdaTest facilitates faster and more efficient application delivery. LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform to run app and mobile website testing, manually, automated, and in real-time at scale. With the LambdaTest Jenkins plugin, testers can easily automate their Selenium test scripts on a cloud Selenium grid of more than 3000 environments, real mobile devices, and browsers over the internet to achieve scalability and the highest test coverage.
Open-Source
Developers and test teams can download Jenkins for free without any hassles. This open-source automation server can scale up across various cloud platforms or on-premise virtual environments without creating a budget problem.
Less risk
Making big changes at once makes it longer to test and fix issues. With Jenkins there is less risk as small changes are easier to test and fix than releasing big code changes.
Hosting options
Jenkins gives developers the freedom to install and deploy this server on Apple macOS, Microsoft Windows, and Linux. Additionally, it can run on a Docker container for high portability and scalability.
Robust community support
Jenkins was officially released in 2011. Being available as an open-source code enables software engineers, developers, community contributors, and tech enthusiasts to contribute to its improvement including its functionality, and maintenance. Thus providing users with updates as new features get released more often.
Complexities in Jenkins
- Jenkins requires a lot of settings and plugins, which is quite tricky to learn and maintain as well as takes time to figure out.
- Plugins add features but managing them and keeping them can be hard and cause issues.
- Jenkins may introduce security issues if not set up properly.
- Jenkins is tough to scale.
- Debugging when something breaks can be slow and difficult.
- Requires custom coding to integrate with other tools.
- Keeping all environment settings and configurations simple is challenging.
- Switching to others from Jenkins in the future can be challenging.
Best practices for creating an ideal CI/CD pipeline with Jenkins
Jenkins is powerful and using this pipeline helps teams work better, and enhance their workflows. But it comes with many difficulties for teams just starting with Jenkins. Therefore using Jenkins the right way teams need to be careful, otherwise, the pipelines will be messy, may often break, and can have security holes. As a result, the team will end up wasting time in fixing issues.
To properly use Jenkins in CI/CD projects, improve the development, and make it a successful team can follow these best practices mentioned below.
Utilize shared libraries
Very often, different teams in a single organization design similar pipelines, which create duplication. To avoid this, it is recommended to share pipeline components throughout different projects. Jenkins Pipeline enables the creation of shared libraries that can be loaded into the current pipelines or defined in a third-party source control repository.
Avoid using Groovy code for major functionalities
All the Jenkins CI/CD Pipeline steps utilize single steps, like shell commands instead of Groovy code. Use Groovy code only to chain the stages together. This will make the pipeline less complex, ensuring that even when the number of steps increases; it can still operate without using a lot of controller resources.
Backup each Jenkins instance
Reliable backup techniques must be used in each Jenkins instance to restore mistakenly deleted or corrupted files, enabling disaster recovery.
Use Docker images in pipelines
Jenkins CI/CD Pipeline has inbuilt support to work with Docker within Jenkinsfiles. For the entire pipeline or just a single stage, Jenkins Docker images can be used to avoid configuring agents and specify the tools needed directly in the Docker image.
Deleting old builds
Jenkins allows users to automatically remove old and unwanted builds without affecting its controller. Failing to get rid of outdated builds will result is running out of resources for new releases
Conclusion
In conclusion, Jenkins is one of the most widely used and open-source CI/CD tools well-liked by developers across the world. While Jenkins configuration and monitoring require additional server administration skills, considering its numerous benefits, including a huge ecosystem of plug-ins and integrations, vibrant community, and being actively developed, its challenges can be managed.
Implementing the above-mentioned best practices can help developers integrate CI/CD into their deployment environment quickly and efficiently.