Re: Automated Jenkins Plugin/Dependency Management

[Jason Kulatunga]

Yep, the command is `jar xvf jenkins.war`, that will explode the war into 
the current directory. 

On Friday, August 26, 2016 at 12:27:00 PM UTC-7, Michael Kobit wrote:
>
> Is there a way to basically "unzip" the *jenkins.war* so that the 
> plugins, workflow-libs, and other parts can be configured before actually 
> running the service?
>
> On Wednesday, August 17, 2016 at 9:36:08 AM UTC-5, Jason Kulatunga wrote:
>>
>> Hey,
>> Thanks for all the help guys.
>> I slept on this idea for a few days because, to be honest I really didn't 
>> want to write my own package manager 
>> <https://medium.com/@sdboyer/so-you-want-to-write-a-package-manager-4ae9c17d9527#.jieuao7e5>
>>  and 
>> re-invent the wheel. I took a step back and looked at how Jenkins solved 
>> this problem for Plugin developers, and I think that we could just 
>> piggy-back on top of what they use 
>> <https://github.com/jenkinsci/gradle-jpi-plugin>.
>>
>> Basically what I've done is specify the plugins I want to install in a 
>> build.gradle file on my Jenkins server. The build.gradle file lets me 
>> specify exactly what versions of the plugins I want for some, and get the 
>> latest for the rest. My install task then goes and copies just the runtime 
>> hpi files to the $JENKINS_HOME/plugins folder (after clearing out whatever 
>> is in there). After restarting my Jenkins server, all plugins are 
>> installed, with the correct versions.
>>
>> I've included a plugin management section in my blog post: You Don't 
>> Know Jenkins - Part 1 
>> <http://blog.thesparktree.com/post/149039600544/you-dont-know-jenkins-part-1>
>>  which 
>> goes into more detail on how it all works, and includes an example 
>> build.gradle file. 
>>
>> Things to note:
>> - The plugin.lock file isn't perfect, its just a STDOUT redirect of 
>> `gradle dependencies` which is great for visually checking which versions 
>> are installed, but committing it to git gets you nothing, subsequent 
>> installs wont be locked to the same transient dependencies. I think I can 
>> solve this by using 
>> https://github.com/nebula-plugins/gradle-dependency-lock-plugin
>> - Since the build.gradle file uses repo.jenkins-ci.org instead of 
>> updates.jenkins-ci.org it does pick up the occassional beta/alpha 
>> version that gets pushed to the releases repo by developers. I'm working to 
>> fix this using a filter in the gradle dependency solver configuration. 
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, August 11, 2016 at 6:03:12 PM UTC-7, Michael Kobit wrote:
>>>
>>> We are looking at doing something similar (actually talking about this 
>>> with colleagues today). The idea is to basically build an immutable Jenkins 
>>> instance that can't be modified. Or at least severely limit any kinds of 
>>> modifications to it so that we have an easily deployable "Jenkins as a 
>>> service".
>>>
>>> I've looked at possibly doing an "unpack and install" execution with the 
>>> *jenkins.war 
>>> *, but it doesn't look like an easy route. The other pain-point I see 
>>> is effectively treating the correct files as "data" that should be 
>>> persisted over time, rather than at "Jenkins build time". I am considering 
>>> trying out the Docker-type approach. I think for plugin resolution, we are 
>>> probably going to have to go the route that you are talking about for doing 
>>> the resolution ourselves.
>>>
>>> For security type issues, I think we could still handle it with the 
>>> Docker approach. Build whatever restrictions into the next "immutable" 
>>> image and making that deployable. Then, we can have a "staging" area and 
>>> easily rollback if we effectively control all the things we need to 
>>> control. We are experimenting with pipelines right now, and are waiting to 
>>> see how https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-33507 will work 
>>> for us to get as much of the job configuration out of Jenkins as possible.
>>>
>>> We are still in the brainstorming phase, so I'm interested to see who 
>>> else has ran into this and what they have done.
>>>
>>> On Thursday, August 11, 2016 at 5:47:45 PM UTC-5, Jason Kulatunga wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hey,
>>>> Thanks for all the feedback :)
>>>>
>>>> @Daniel Beck:
>>>> Yup, I'm familiar with the limitations of the 
>>>> https://updates.jenkins-ci.org/current/update-center.json file. That

You Don't Know Jenkins

[Jason Kulatunga]

Hey Jenkins-Users,

I was told this might interest some of you.
I'm writing a series of blog posts describing how we automate Jenkins at 
scale (hundreds of Jobs, hundreds of developers,  dozens of Jenkins servers 
+ nodes just for our team).

Part 1 - Automated Jenkins Install using Chef 

Part 2 - Maintainable Jenkins Jobs using Job DSL 

Part 3 - Leveraging Pipelines for Continuous Deployment/Orchestration 
(Coming soon)
Part 4 - Advanced DSL & Pipeline Techniques (Coming soon)

I'd love to get feedback from some of you other heavy Jenkins users. 

Thanks!

-Jason

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Re: Automated Jenkins Plugin/Dependency Management

[Jason Kulatunga]

Hey,
Thanks for all the help guys.
I slept on this idea for a few days because, to be honest I really didn't 
want to write my own package manager 
<https://medium.com/@sdboyer/so-you-want-to-write-a-package-manager-4ae9c17d9527#.jieuao7e5>
 and 
re-invent the wheel. I took a step back and looked at how Jenkins solved 
this problem for Plugin developers, and I think that we could just 
piggy-back on top of what they use 
<https://github.com/jenkinsci/gradle-jpi-plugin>.

Basically what I've done is specify the plugins I want to install in a 
build.gradle file on my Jenkins server. The build.gradle file lets me 
specify exactly what versions of the plugins I want for some, and get the 
latest for the rest. My install task then goes and copies just the runtime 
hpi files to the $JENKINS_HOME/plugins folder (after clearing out whatever 
is in there). After restarting my Jenkins server, all plugins are 
installed, with the correct versions.

I've included a plugin management section in my blog post: You Don't Know 
Jenkins - Part 1 
<http://blog.thesparktree.com/post/149039600544/you-dont-know-jenkins-part-1> 
which 
goes into more detail on how it all works, and includes an example 
build.gradle file. 

Things to note:
- The plugin.lock file isn't perfect, its just a STDOUT redirect of `gradle 
dependencies` which is great for visually checking which versions are 
installed, but committing it to git gets you nothing, subsequent installs 
wont be locked to the same transient dependencies. I think I can solve this 
by using https://github.com/nebula-plugins/gradle-dependency-lock-plugin
- Since the build.gradle file uses repo.jenkins-ci.org instead 
of updates.jenkins-ci.org it does pick up the occassional beta/alpha 
version that gets pushed to the releases repo by developers. I'm working to 
fix this using a filter in the gradle dependency solver configuration. 



On Thursday, August 11, 2016 at 6:03:12 PM UTC-7, Michael Kobit wrote:
>
> We are looking at doing something similar (actually talking about this 
> with colleagues today). The idea is to basically build an immutable Jenkins 
> instance that can't be modified. Or at least severely limit any kinds of 
> modifications to it so that we have an easily deployable "Jenkins as a 
> service".
>
> I've looked at possibly doing an "unpack and install" execution with the 
> *jenkins.war 
> *, but it doesn't look like an easy route. The other pain-point I see is 
> effectively treating the correct files as "data" that should be persisted 
> over time, rather than at "Jenkins build time". I am considering trying out 
> the Docker-type approach. I think for plugin resolution, we are probably 
> going to have to go the route that you are talking about for doing the 
> resolution ourselves.
>
> For security type issues, I think we could still handle it with the Docker 
> approach. Build whatever restrictions into the next "immutable" image and 
> making that deployable. Then, we can have a "staging" area and easily 
> rollback if we effectively control all the things we need to control. We 
> are experimenting with pipelines right now, and are waiting to see how 
> https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-33507 will work for us to 
> get as much of the job configuration out of Jenkins as possible.
>
> We are still in the brainstorming phase, so I'm interested to see who else 
> has ran into this and what they have done.
>
> On Thursday, August 11, 2016 at 5:47:45 PM UTC-5, Jason Kulatunga wrote:
>>
>> Hey,
>> Thanks for all the feedback :)
>>
>> @Daniel Beck:
>> Yup, I'm familiar with the limitations of the 
>> https://updates.jenkins-ci.org/current/update-center.json file. Thats 
>> why I'm thinking of creating a plugin/dependency resolution system that 
>> will have to directly download the specific version of a plugin file from 
>> update site folder structure 
>> https://updates.jenkins-ci.org/download/plugins/*/ or use 
>> https://updates.jenkins-ci.org/latest/ 
>> if no version restriction is found.
>>
>> I wasn't aware that pinning was pointless in 2.x so that'll be an 
>> interesting problem to deal with. It seems that I'll have to restrict all 
>> access to the UpdateCenter for idea #1, or do a hybrid approach with a 
>> UpdateCenter subclass as well.
>>
>> @Baptiste Mathus 
>> Unfortunately just using an image with locked plugins isn't a long term 
>> solution, because we'll have to occasionally update our Jenkins due to 
>> required security updates in plugins or the main application. So being able 
>> to update plugins, creating a new *.lock file, test the plugin interactions 
>> and deploying the *.lock file to existing Jenkins servers is 

Re: Automated Jenkins Plugin/Dependency Management

[Jason Kulatunga]

Hey,
Thanks for all the feedback :)

@Daniel Beck:
Yup, I'm familiar with the limitations of the 
https://updates.jenkins-ci.org/current/update-center.json file. Thats why 
I'm thinking of creating a plugin/dependency resolution system that will 
have to directly download the specific version of a plugin file from update 
site folder structure https://updates.jenkins-ci.org/download/plugins/*/ or 
use https://updates.jenkins-ci.org/latest/ if no version restriction is 
found.

I wasn't aware that pinning was pointless in 2.x so that'll be an 
interesting problem to deal with. It seems that I'll have to restrict all 
access to the UpdateCenter for idea #1, or do a hybrid approach with a 
UpdateCenter subclass as well.

@Baptiste Mathus 
Unfortunately just using an image with locked plugins isn't a long term 
solution, because we'll have to occasionally update our Jenkins due to 
required security updates in plugins or the main application. So being able 
to update plugins, creating a new *.lock file, test the plugin interactions 
and deploying the *.lock file to existing Jenkins servers is a requirement. 

I was hoping to stay away from a hybrid approach that used both an 
executable and a subclass as it makes development and deployment more 
complicated, decreasing adoption with Jenkins users. 

Honestly the goal was to create a tool like Bundler/Pip which would just 
work out of the box for 99% of use cases. 

Are there other people experiencing the same issue? I'm more than happy to 
create my own open source solution, but I'd love to base it on an existing 
(even unmaintained) project. 

-Jason


On Thursday, August 11, 2016 at 4:51:07 PM UTC-4, Baptiste Mathus wrote:
>
> IMO a Docker image with the right set of plugins you've tested, plus the 
> security config you're talking about about forbidding any upgrade would 
> seem a simpler way. And probably it would your life simpler if you somehow 
> have to support all those different instances which can currently be 
> actually quite different.
>
> HTH
>
> Le 11 août 2016 3:14 PM, "Jason Kulatunga" <darkm...@gmail.com 
> > a écrit :
>
> Hey Jenkins-Users,
>
> I manage almost a dozen Jenkins servers and our team has been having some 
> issues with plugin management: such as locking our new installations to 
> known working versions of some troublesome Jenkins plugins.
> We use chef + Jenkins DSL to completely automate the initial installation 
> of Jenkins, but we're not exactly thrilled with the way the Chef cookbook 
> handles plugin installation and we've also verified that 
> 'installNecessaryPlugins' does not actually respect the version parameter. 
>
> curl -XPOST 
> http://192.150.23.105:8080/pluginManager/installNecessaryPlugins -d 
> ''
>
> As such I've started looking into alternative means of locking plugins in 
> an automated way during installation and I've come up with the following 
> ideas:
>
> # An External Dependency Management Tool, eg Bundler, Pip, Berkshelf
> Basically an executable that would:
>
>1. retrieve a list of all plugins installed in a specific Jenkins 
>server using the API, and add them to a dependency graph (with metadata: 
>installed, pinned, enabled, version)
>2. look for a dependency config file (like Gemfile, Berksfile, 
>requirements.txt)
>3. iterate through all the uninstalled plugins in the dep config file 
>and add them (and their dependencies) to the dependency graph
>4. solve the graph by ensuring that no pinned/locked version conflicts 
>occur. 
>5. download all uninstalled plugins directly from 
>https://updates.jenkins-ci.org/
>6. using the Jenkins api, pin any version locked plugins specified in 
>the dependency config file. 
>7. write the solved dependency graph to the filesystem (eg 
>Berksfile.lock, Gemfile.lock) (and use it for any subsequent installs if 
> no 
>plugins have changed)
>8. disable all permissions to the update center in Jenkins so no users 
>enable/update plugins manually. 
>
> # UpdateCenter Override
>
>1. subclass the default Jenkins UpdateCenter, and tell Jenkins to use 
>it using a JVM property
>2. override the UpdateCenter.InstallationJob constructor to download 
>the plugin version specified from the  dependency config lock file if it 
>exists or install like normal and then generate/update a dependency config 
>lock file with every operation.
>3. listen to the pin event in the PluginCenter and update the 
>dependency config lock file. 
>
> I'm not sure if anyone has done something similar but I wanted to get some 
> feedback before I spent too much time investigating either idea. 
>
> Any and all feedback is welcome
>
> -Jason
> Build Automation Engin