Yale Jenkins
Build and Deploy
E Camden Fisher
camden.fisher@yale.edu
Technical Lead
Unix Infrastructure and Virtualization

Who Uses Jenkins @Yale?

Overview:
How does Jenkins make life better?
Without Jenkins With Jenkins
● Building is slow, error prone ● "fire and forget", consistent!
● Testing is onerous ● Testing is automated!
● Code coverage is onerous ● Code coverage is automated!
● Bugs caught later ● Bugs caught early and often!
● Devs worry about environments ● Devs worry about code!
● Lack of change control for ● Change control in the right
deployments places for deployments!
● Slow progress ● Rapid progress! Agility!
● Different artifact per environment ● Identical artifact per
● Inconsistent configuration per environment!
environment ● Identical configuration per
● Deployments are "hard" environments!
● Integration Hell ● Deployments are easy! "Click!"
● Integration Nirvana

Continuous Integration
Continuous Integration is a software development practice
○ Maintain a Single Source Repository
○ Automate the Build
○ Make Your Build Self-Testing
○ Everyone Commits To the Mainline Every Day
○ Every Commit Should Build the Mainline on an Integration Machine
○ Keep the Build Fast
○ Test in a Clone of the Production Environment
○ Make it Easy for Anyone to Get the Latest Executable
○ Everyone can see what's happening
○ Automate Deployment
Avoid "Integration Hell!!"

What is Jenkins?
Jenkins is an application and a framework that
manages and monitors the execution of
repeated tasks.

Why Jenkins?
● Easy!
● Extensible
● Scalable
● Flexible
● Open Source
● Supported by Cloudbees

History Lesson:
Application lifecycle is a progression
● Source Code Management
● Maven and Artifactory
● Building and Testing with Jenkins
● Container Configurable artifacts
● Managed deployments with Jenkins

Source Control Management
● Islands of SCM begat central SCM (subversion)
○ Single source repository!
○ Easy to get access.
○ Easy to onboard.
○ Easy to support.
○ Everyone wins!

Maven and Artifactory
● Maven
○ Project Object Model (POM)
○ Simplifies dependency resolution ("oops I forgot that .jar!")
○ Makes the build process easy and uniform
● Artifactory (Maven Repository)
○ Where do I put my built artifacts?
○ Makes it easy for everyone to get the latest build!

Builds without Jenkins
● Builds take a long time
● Automated Testing takes longer!
● Code coverage reports take even longer!
● Result: developers don't build, test or report on their code regularly enough
because it's just too time consuming.
● Build environments are not standardized
○ my laptop has a different o/s, jvm, ruby version, gems, libraries, etc
than yours
● Mistakes are caught later, harder to debug

Builds with Jenkins
● SCM commits automatically kick off a build
○ Automate the build!
● Testing and code coverage is automated and is run on every commit.
○ Makes the Build Self-Testing!
● Broken builds immediately notify the team and the committer (Email, IRC,
IM, Taskbar, etc)
● Tests run in a Clone of the Production Environment!
● Everyone can easily see what's happening!
● Developers can get back to coding instead of building and testing.
● Releases are quick and easy

Container Configurable Artifacts
● Artifacts were built with configuration information embedded inside them.
○ ie. datasources, CAS service endpoints, etc
○ Artifacts are different per environment! What!?
○ "Oops, I forgot to update that parameter!"
● Externalization of configuration parameters
○ deployable XML
○ Apps self configure with JNDI
● Now we have Container Configurable artifacts
○ The SAME artifact migrates between environments
○ XML configuration data is all that differentiates environments
● Vendor-lock-in-less PaaS plug

Deployments without Jenkins
● Choice between loss of control or loss of agility
○ Either devs can edit deployables or they can't
○ Often devs can configure the container
● If they can...
○ Code is deployed, edited and removed without Change Control
○ "I'll clean it up later!"
○ Dev environments quickly diverge from Production
○ Security is compromised
■ Elevated privileges on servers
■ Shell management on servers
● If they can't...
○ Change requests are "slow", systems groups must do everything

Deployments with Jenkins
● Consistency!
● Jenkins writes configuration XML
● Developers can deploy to DEV at will
● Eliminate shells, and elevated privileges on servers
● Container is managed by infrastructure with the O/S
● Empowers developers to GTD
● Puts gates at appropriate places
● Changes to the Jenkins jobs require change control
● Frees Systems folks to work on more interesting things
● Workflow integration with Kintana

Non-Java languages
This all applies to Non-Java projects too!
Php
○ Continuous deployment to DEV for Drupal
○ Code coverage and unit testing available
Ruby
○ Automated unit testing
○ Automated code coverage
○ Automated deployment coming soon
.Net
○ Build, unit test, archive creation

The future...
● RBAC + folders
○ delegate responsibility to other systems groups
● More ruby
○ unit testing and code coverage
○ deployments
● Enterprise Service Bus
● Cloud deployments

Questions?
E Camden Fisher
Technical Lead
Unix Infrastructure and Virtualization
camden.fisher@yale.edu
@fishnix