Knowing that your time is limited on literate is actually a comfort.  I
read your earlier blog entry and thought it was a great idea, but then
didn't see any further progress so I worried that the idea had died
quietly.  If it is still your vision but with limited time, then I'll
explore and report what I find.


On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 6:42 AM, Stephen Connolly <
[email protected]> wrote:

> JIRA. That way others can help try and fix. My time on literate is limited
> right now too though... so that is an issue.
>
> Glad you like my vision!
>
>
> On 10 March 2014 12:33, Mark Waite <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> That is a great vision.  I'd like to help the vision with some testing
>> and can provide you some feedback.  How would you prefer the feedback?  I
>> can submit bug reports through JIRA, or send mail to the list, or some
>> other technique.
>>
>> Testing time is limited, and must be squeezed around my real job and my
>> family, but I'm sure I can provide some testing and some feedback if there
>> are indications they will be helpful to your efforts.
>>
>> Mark Waite
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 6:28 AM, Stephen Connolly <
>> [email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> I will give you my vision.
>>>
>>> In my vision there are two types of things:
>>>
>>> 1. Things that depend on the stuff in a build job itself
>>> 2. Things that depend on the inter-relationship of jobs within a CI
>>> server.
>>>
>>> Traditionally, Jenkins takes the view that there is just one type of
>>> thing. So you end up configuring everything in the Jenkins job (or you use 
>>> the
>>> evil 
>>> one<http://javaadventure.blogspot.ie/2013/11/jenkins-maven-job-type-considered-evil.html>
>>>  and
>>> have slightly less to configure)
>>>
>>> This leads people to want to lock down access to some portions of the
>>> configuration... in a sense you need to let some people tweak the first
>>> type of things (because they are changing the code being built and thus may
>>> break the instructions as to how to build it) but you don't want to let
>>> them tweak the second type of things (e.g. how the built application gets
>>> put into the staging environment and which job(s) to trigger so that the
>>> pre-production tests run against the staging environment)
>>>
>>> The folly people then run down is trying to get a division of permission
>>> scopes.
>>>
>>> There is, however, a split... if you let people commit to source
>>> control, then in reality you let them change the build script that lives in
>>> source control (unless you are using SVN and lock the build script down
>>> with permissions... but at some point a refactoring needs a tweak to the
>>> build script and giving developers a world of pain to make those changes
>>> only pisses them off)... or they write a unit test that does the changes on
>>> the fly as a hack around the fact you haven't given them the ability to
>>> tweak the build script... so now your build script is part build script
>>> part unit test hacks that "fix" the build script.
>>>
>>> So the simple fact is that however you set up your build script, you
>>> have to accept that developers will be able to change the build script.
>>> This probably means that you have code review for changes to the build
>>> script... not that the devs are making malicious changes... more that they
>>> are making appropriate changes.
>>>
>>> In my view a CI build job should not need configuration changes to
>>> reflect a change in the build script... the CI job should be able to pick
>>> up the configuration relevant to the build script from the source tree
>>> itself... hence the literate job type.
>>>
>>> This unlocks a lot of great power... tracking multiple branches is now
>>> trivial, as each branch stores the detail of how that branches version of
>>> the build script should be interpreted...
>>>
>>> All the Type 1 things are configuration that naturally should sit within
>>> source control. People who can change the build script can then change the
>>> corresponding jenkins configuration in the same atomic commit.
>>>
>>> The Type 2 things are about the greater context. That context relies on
>>> other projects. It relies on knowledge that is outside the scope of SCM
>>> about which branch is the current mainline... The SCM may know on Day X
>>> this branch was tagged as being the mainline... but it has no way to link
>>> against the other SCM repos that hold the side projects with their
>>> independent release schedules.
>>>
>>> The Type 2 things are invariably the bits that you don't want the
>>> developers messing with. With the literate project type those things remain
>>> in the Jenkins UI.
>>>
>>> Literate (and I think it needs a better name BTW) is about moving the
>>> Type 1 things out of the Jenkins UI and into the SCM where they belong.
>>>
>>> What is literate missing before I call it 1.0 (without the alpha or
>>> beta):
>>>
>>> * Support for GitHub pull requests
>>> * Support for Maven multi-module reporting (without invoking the curse
>>> of the evil one)
>>> * Support for untrusted builds (partially there... just need something
>>> that people can more easily use)
>>> * It would be super nice if Vincent can get his Yaml parser stuff
>>> committed before 1.0 also so that people who don't like the markdown build
>>> description can use the yaml based alternative (literate has always had a
>>> "yaml" format... just one that only supported a very very small subset of
>>> the "yaml" syntax that people expect)
>>>
>>> The real joy of literate will be when you can have pull requests get
>>> their own branch job on demand that gets built with a commit note being
>>> added back to the pull request and the branch job being removed once the
>>> pull request is resolved.
>>>
>>> The functionality comes with a risk... namely the drive-by pull request
>>> that f*cks your build server... oh let's just add a `rm -rf /` to the build
>>> script via a pull request using a throwaway github account I created just
>>> to screw you over.
>>>
>>> So before I give people the GitHub pull request UI for literate... I
>>> need to give people an easy route to protect themselves, e.g. by letting
>>> them say that pull request builds will run in a chroot environment, or an
>>> LXC container, or whatever set of protections they want.
>>>
>>> On top of that, weaving in the Maven support that I want to add may make
>>> changes to the literate job type that could be problematic to migrate, so I
>>> would like to get those features bedded down before calling something 1.0.
>>>
>>> So that is my vision... there is still some work left in it... but a
>>> vast chunk has been completed...
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10 March 2014 11:56, Stephen Connolly <
>>> [email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Like that's going to stop them...
>>>>
>>>>       <plugin>
>>>>         <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
>>>>         <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
>>>>         <version>1.2.1</version>
>>>>         <executions>
>>>>           <execution>
>>>>             <goals>
>>>>               <goal>exec</goal>
>>>>              </goals>
>>>>             <configuration>
>>>>               <executable>/bin/rm</executable>
>>>>               <workingDirectory>/</workingDirectory>
>>>>                <arguments>
>>>>                 <argument>-rf</argument>
>>>>                 <argument>/</argument>
>>>>               </arguments>
>>>>             </configuration>
>>>>           </execution>
>>>>         </executions>
>>>>       </plugin>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 10 March 2014 00:39, Christian Willman <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Unfortunately it is not possible. A common suggestion is to template
>>>>> out your specific job type, but even then, there is no authorization
>>>>> strategy to prevent users from simply creating a new FreestyleBuild with a
>>>>> console build step.
>>>>>
>>>>> Our organization has the same requirements -- we cannot allow
>>>>> untrusted developers to run arbitrary shell commands. We've solved this by
>>>>> switching to an external templating system (which I wrote in-house). Now
>>>>> developers cannot create or modify *any* jobs directly through the
>>>>> Jenkins UI. This works for us because 99% of our Java projects can be 
>>>>> built
>>>>> with a simple "mvn clean deploy". The oddball jobs are isolated to a
>>>>> heavily-audited Jenkins instance.
>>>>>
>>>>> Another potential solution is to implement your own job types and then
>>>>> write a custom authorization strategy which revokes access to the built-in
>>>>> job types. But this is not maintainable and will probably require a
>>>>> dedicated admin to babysit the implementation for the foreseeable future.
>>>>>
>>>>> I've searched through the source and couldn't figure out any other
>>>>> implementations which don't require modifications to the Jenkins core.
>>>>> Unfortunately nobody (including Cloudbees) seems interested in this use
>>>>> case right now.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Christian
>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Thanks!
>> Mark Waite
>>
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Thanks!
Mark Waite

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