| Table of Contents | |
| Forward: Why We Use Jenkins at Bugfender | |
| What is Jenkins and Why Should You Be Using it? | |
| What is Continuous Integration? | |
| How Does Continuous Integration Differ from Continuous Delivery? | |
| How Does CI/CD Benefit a Devops Team? | |
| Intro to Jenkins | |
| Pros vs. Cons of Jenkins | |
| How to Install Jenkins in Ubuntu | |
| Selecting the Right Machine | |
| Choosing an Operating System | |
| How to Install Jenkins | |
| Recommended Detour: Add SSL to Protect Your Jenkins Installation | |
| How to Add your First Android Job to Jenkins | |
| Configuring Android App Builds in Jenkins | |
| Accelerate Gradle (optional) | |
| Running Unit Tests | |
| Running Integration Tests | |
| Suggestions for Next Steps | |
| How to Add Your First iOS Job to Jenkins | |
| How to Add a Mac Node for iOS Builds | |
| Configuring iOS Jobs | |
| Adding Tests | |
| Closing Words | |
| Keys to Sustainability Maintaining Jenkins | |
| Tips for Getting Started Today | |
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| Table of contents | |
| 1 | |
| ################################## | |
| Forward | |
| Why We Use Jenkins at Bugfender | |
| We designed Bugfender to meet our own internal need for remote | |
| logging capabilities for mobile app development at Mobile Jazz. We | |
| launched it as a product in its own right in 2015. | |
| We took a common mobile developer headache and made it a little simpler. In | |
| the beginning, several of our developers realized they needed a remote way to | |
| store users’ logs, so they set up the infrastructure to make it happen. | |
| As this side project has become a business of its own right, much of our | |
| progress can be credited to all the work that has gone into automating and | |
| maintaining cloud-based development, testing, and deployment | |
| environments. | |
| About 4 years ago, we realized that although we would write good iOS unit | |
| tests, we did not execute them regularly enough to make sure they kept | |
| working. | |
| Writing tests without using them is a complete waste of time, so we decided | |
| to go one step further: using Jenkins to automate the execution of the tests | |
| every time someone makes a change to the code. | |
| In this way, Jenkins has allowed us to cut excess by reducing the time spent | |
| manually running tests. At Bugfender, we like to home-cook solutions to | |
| automate as much as possible, so this open source software worked for us. | |
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| 2 | |
| ################################## | |
| Jenkins makes sure our code compiles, so we save hundreds of hours of | |
| manpower because we don’t have to work through the tiny issues in | |
| compilation and shipping to a production-ready state. Every commit that is | |
| green is deployable to production. Boom, we’re done. | |
| At its core, CI/CD is all about letting machines do what they do best | |
| so humans can do what brings the most value to your company. | |
| Of course, one of the main obstacles is belief in the value of CD/CI at every | |
| company level. As we will explain in the first chapter of in this ebook, there | |
| are complications to maintaining a CI/CD environment, and many developers | |
| find themselves trying to convince upper management why it’s worth it. | |
| Fortunately, the hub of enterprise for Jenkins and DevOps, CloudBees, has put | |
| a number on the savings that businesses can expect from integrating | |
| continuous delivery in their devops teams. CI/CD is all about saving your | |
| company money: | |
| A CloudBees assessment of more than 100 enterprises revealed that continuous delivery enables | |
| an average efficiency gain of 66 hours per developer per year. For a 100-person team, this | |
| efficiency equates to 6,600 more hours to invest in innovation; an estimated annual value of | |
| $350,0001. | |
| Currently, though it seems CI/CD is a popular talking point, many teams | |
| haven’t made the leap yet or neglect the upkeep needed to keep their testing | |
| environment operative. | |
| We created this ebook to help your company fast-track the | |
| implementation of Jenkins, so you can start saving money + start | |
| preventing a common developer headache. | |
| Table of contents | |
| 3 | |
| ################################## | |
| What is Jenkins and Why Should You Be Using | |
| It? | |
| A common problem for many devops teams is a fragmented | |
| workflow. | |
| Inefficiency can be infuriating. | |
| You know how it goes: individuals on the team tend to work independently. | |
| Coding solo, engineers regularly create large segments of code outside of | |
| version control. Once a developer is “done,” they add their work into the | |
| basecode. Then another team manually runs tests to verify the build. | |
| For years, many teams have found this division of labor annoying and | |
| problematic. | |
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| When multiple developers separately commit large changes to version | |
| control, they create complex bugs, multiply time-intensive fixes, and increase | |
| the time it takes to do more manual testing. Everything slows down. | |
| These inefficiencies clog up your build cycle with tedious debugging, slow | |
| down the time to production, and ultimately undercut your company’s profits. | |
| What is Continuous Integration? | |
| Continuous integration (CI) is a process aimed at cutting out build cycle | |
| inefficiencies by allowing developers to compile the team’s code from a | |
| shared version control repository. CI also allows you to automate testing so | |
| you can set up the system to automatically run unit tests or integration tests | |
| for example. | |
| CI automatically monitors the commits that each engineer makes. This | |
| streamlines the build and verification of code so that testing is not so high- | |
| stakes. It’s recognized as a best practice in the software development | |
| community. | |
| CI is run on a shared server that increases visibility, so all the engineers on a | |
| project are aware of changes in the base code day in and day out. In addition, | |
| you can configure the server to alert developers when they submit failing | |
| code so that they can fix any errors they introduce. | |
| Using CI automation allows you to shorten development release cycles and | |
| improve product quality. And it’s all customizable to your project and your | |
| needs. | |
| CI/CD servers, including Jenkins, allow your team to set up the tests that you | |
| need to run. | |
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| There are various levels of testing automation that you can implement: | |
| The most basic test is whether or not the code actually compiles. Code can | |
| also be “linted” or checked for style. Your team can write more complex tests | |
| to cover other bases as well, including unit, integration, stress, regression | |
| testing, etc. | |
| How Does Continuous Integration Differ from Continuous Delivery? | |
| A CI service compiles and tests a full application (possibly by running the | |
| application in an emulator). Continuous delivery also pushes this compiled | |
| application to a repository, for example, for alpha testers to use and provide | |
| early feedback. | |
| CD builds are automatically deployed through to the production environment | |
| and can also be used for broader beta testing. | |
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| CD is aimed at lean-logistics: automating the process from adding new code | |
| through to acceptance testing. CD automates all the steps so that your build | |
| is ready to be deployed. | |
| ➔ Continuous delivery: Besides building the application and running tests | |
| on it, the application is also “delivered,” which often means putting it on | |
| a server for someone to perform manual tests on it, or sent by email to | |
| a test group of users (eg. a mobile app sent by email). | |
| ➔ For production builds, delivery means deploying the application for the | |
| end users. | |
| This allows for faster, smaller deployments of your product which reduce | |
| deployment risk. Regular, smaller, leaner deliveries are less risky that huge | |
| ones that only occur once or twice a year. | |
| How Does CI/CD Benefit a Devops Team? | |
| A lot of people talk about CI because it is a best practice to have all code | |
| verified automatically on every commit, regularly run tests, and continuously | |
| deploy–for the reasons mentioned above. The process checks that the | |
| contributions from each developer work well together. Detecting these issues | |
| early makes it easier and faster to fix the bugs. | |
| As you can probably guess, implementing CI/CD will cause a cultural shift in | |
| your team. You will have to become more agile and integrated. | |
| As we mentioned in our intro, CI was created to allow your team to stop | |
| wasting human time trying to manually resolve conflicting segments of new | |
| code, trigger builds, or run tests. | |
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| 7 | |
| ################################## | |
| Instead, it encourages adding small, incremental changes in code so you | |
| don’t end up with huge, complex bugs to fix. This speeds up the build cycle, | |
| potentially streamlining deployment and production. | |
| And it’s helpful to remember–production is where your business actually | |
| makes money. | |
| Also, interestingly, for a multi-developer remote team, CI is extremely helpful | |
| to implement because it brings you all together and continuously combines | |
| your work so you’re all on the same page regardless of geographic location. | |
| Jenkins helps structure the build cycle of a remote team. | |
| How Jenkins Helps the Bugfender Team: | |
| ➔ Running Jenkins allows us to continuously check that the code compiles | |
| and run a set of basic tests that we have programmed to verify the base | |
| code after every commit. | |
| ➔ We automatically deploy the merged code to an integration environment, | |
| which can be used for manual tests (this bit is called “continuous | |
| delivery”). | |
| ➔ We also use it to generate and deploy production builds. Our deployments | |
| are complex because we are not updating a single machine: We’re | |
| updating a whole cluster of machines. We have to be sure to perform | |
| updates in a way that does not disrupt the service. Deployment in such an | |
| environment could be prone to errors if done by a human. | |
| Table of contents | |
| 8 | |
| ################################## | |
| Intro to Jenkins | |
| Jenkins is an open source implementation of a CI server written in Java that | |
| can be used as a self-hosted option automating the build cycle for any | |
| project. It works with any programming language and for multiple platforms | |
| including Windows, Linux and macOS. According to the Jenkins website: | |
| Jenkins, originally founded in 2006 as “Hudson”, is one of the leading automation servers | |
| available. Using an extensible, plugin-based architecture developers have created hundreds of | |
| plugins to adapt Jenkins to a multitude of build, test, and deployment automation workloads. In | |
| 2015, Jenkins surpassed 100,000 known installations making it the most widely deployed | |
| automation server. | |
| One of the main benefits of Jenkins is that it is a well-known tool with lots of | |
| community support, there are many plugins available (including well-known | |
| names like Slack, GitHub, Docker, Build Pipeline + more), and the project is | |
| well-maintained by a large community of developers. | |
| There are a lot of conversations going on about CI/CD and the Jenkins | |
| project. But even as late as 2017, a surprising number teams don’t utilize or | |
| Table of contents | |
| 9 | |
| ################################## | |
| maintain their systems because running a CI environment is costly, either in | |
| time or money, often both. | |
| So why even bother with them? Let’s look at that question. | |
| Pros vs. Cons of Jenkins | |
| Jenkins is an old tool with an unfriendly user interface.* | |
| (*The good news is that the Jenkins project just released Blue Ocean, a continuous | |
| delivery software aimed at significantly improving the UI. True to form, it is 100% open | |
| source.) | |
| As your team considers options for continuous integration, it is helpful to | |
| note that Jenkins must be run on a server (cost), so it often needs the | |
| attention of someone with system administration skills (time). You can’t just | |
| set it up and then expect it to run itself–the system requires frequent updates | |
| and maintenance. | |
| Yet, Jenkins is open source and one of the best and most widely used free | |
| tools out there for implementing CI/CD for your devops team. | |
| The main barrier to entry for most teams is the initial setup, procrastination, | |
| or failed previous attempts to set it up. | |
| People tend to know it’s a best practice, but many teams neglect it for more | |
| urgent coding work. Perhaps someone on your team tried to implement | |
| Jenkins at some point, but did not successfully maintain it. Maybe the wasted | |
| effort gave your boss a bad impression about it. | |
| As it is, the reasons people do not implement a CI server are usually very | |
| practical. | |
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| One main reason: CI systems regularly break. If a setting in the project | |
| changes, often it is necessary to readjust the configuration of the CI system. | |
| If the CI system is not perceived as highly valuable by the team, they tend to | |
| leave it aside, broken, so it stops delivering value. | |
| Yet another reason for not using CI is that you need to write tests. Writing | |
| tests is something most developers want to do (i.e. a best practice), but they | |
| often don’t find the time to do. Understandably, coding the actual software is | |
| usually a higher priority for business than more administrative tasks. | |
| Also, tests break, meaning when the functionality under a test changes, it | |
| needs to be updated. If they’re not updated, they stop delivering value, as in | |
| the case above. You have to prioritize maintaining the infrastructure yourself | |
| or it will not work. | |
| In summary, it takes time to set up and a decent amount of ongoing | |
| work to keep it updated. But your team can adapt to streamline the | |
| maintenance of the system and tests to increase efficiency. | |
| Of course, there are hosted SaaS alternatives to Jenkins, which could be | |
| beneficial if you’re willing to pay a bit extra for someone else to maintain the | |
| software. Businesses tend to choose this option when they need a superior UI | |
| than what Jenkins offers. But a major benefit of self-hosting is that you have | |
| more control over your own data security. | |
| Implementing CI requires a cultural shift, especially from the management. | |
| They have to allow time for this “unproductive stuff” to be done, while some | |
| of other day to day tasks go on hold. | |
| Table of contents | |
| 11 | |
| ################################## | |
| Still, the brief sacrifice of time translates into long-term benefits for the | |
| whole company ($$$). With Jenkins, your code is easier to maintain and | |
| fewer bugs sneak into production. Your team becomes more integrated. | |
| Builds take less time. Your business can ship faster and keep up with the | |
| changing needs of your customers. | |
| All of this will require a mindset shift: | |
| CI is not an expense but an investment. And the ROI for implementation can | |
| be counted in time saved, errors avoided, and higher quality products | |
| delivered more easily to your clients. | |
| Table of contents | |
| 12 | |
| ################################## | |
| How to Install Jenkins in Ubuntu | |
| If you’re getting started with Jenkins, there are many things to | |
| consider before you hit download. | |
| You have to choose where to run Jenkins: on hardware that you maintain | |
| yourself or through a hosting service. You should work with your team to | |
| decide on the best option for your needs. | |
| As a fully remote lifestyle business, we chose to use Amazon Web Services | |
| on a t2.nano machine type with Ubuntu 16.04, but this configuration can be | |
| adapted depending on the use case. | |
| Selecting the Right Machine | |
| Make sure you choose a machine with at least 1GB of RAM. If you don’t have | |
| enough internal memory, Jenkins won’t run. For decent performance, 2 to 4GB | |
| is ideal. | |
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| 13 | |
| ################################## | |
| For Android, we would recommend a t2.medium machine at least. For iOS, | |
| you need a Mac, so we would recommend a Mac Mini. Many people find an | |
| older Macbook around the office and use it to run Jenkins, though we found | |
| that ours got overheated so we had to upgrade. | |
| Choosing an Operating System | |
| Jenkins runs on nearly any operating system you can imagine, as long as it | |
| can run Java or Docker. For this post I will be using Ubuntu, but you can use | |
| whatever operating system suits you best because the steps are very similar. | |
| How to Install Jenkins | |
| Step 1: Install Jenkins Using your Package Manager | |
| On Ubuntu you can do this with: | |
| wget -q -O - https://pkg.jenkins.io/debian-stable/jenkins.io.key | | |
| sudo apt-key add - | |
| echo "deb http://pkg.jenkins.io/debian-stable binary/" | sudo | |
| tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jenkins.list | |
| sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y install jenkins | |
| Note: You have other installation options including two different release lines. | |
| See https://jenkins.io/download/ to learn the difference between weekly | |
| release and LTS (long-term support) options. | |
| Once installed, Jenkins will be running on port 8080. If you are accessing this | |
| server remotely, make sure to open the port 8080 in your firewall. | |
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| ################################## | |
| Step 2: Open Your Browser | |
| In your browser, go to http://your-ci-server-name.com:8080. If your machine is | |
| running Jenkins, the window should display the setup wizard. | |
| Step 3: Unlocking Jenkins | |
| In order to ensure that you’re the real administrator of the machine, the | |
| password has been written to a specified log file. In a fresh terminal, type in | |
| sudo cat and then paste in the pathway provided on this page in order to | |
| get a temporary password. Then you can enter the password in the | |
| Administrator password field in your browser. | |
| This step is a security measure in case your Jenkins download is publicly | |
| accessible from the internet or your company’s network. | |
| (For information about more security measures for Jenkins, see “Recommended detour: | |
| add SSL to protect your Jenkins installation” below.) | |
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| 15 | |
| ################################## | |
| Step 4: Customizing Jenkins Plugins | |
| You can go ahead and click the Install the suggested plugins box. This will | |
| activate the download of a handful of useful plugins, including Git and some | |
| Pipeline plugins. You can always download other plugins as necessary to | |
| supplement these pre-selected options. | |
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| 16 | |
| ################################## | |
| Step 5: Create Admin Login | |
| You can create your user account by adding a username, entering a new | |
| password, and including a full name and email address. Once you’re in | |
| Jenkins, you can choose to enable new users which will allow colleagues to | |
| create additional logins as needed. | |
| And that’s it! You’ve installed Jenkins. | |
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| 17 | |
| ################################## | |
| Recommended Detour: Add SSL to Protect Your Jenkins Installation | |
| Since Jenkins has access to your application’s source code, we recommend | |
| you use encryption. The essence of your product–the code–is likely sensitive | |
| and should be kept private. If you are running Jenkins through the internet or | |
| on a local network shared with other people, it might be good to protect | |
| communications with SSL. | |
| Since the launch of Let’s Encrypt, it’s fairly easy and completely free to get | |
| these certificates, so we highly recommend it. Don’t be lazy! | |
| Step 1: If your server is behind a firewall, first make sure you are accepting | |
| inbound traffic on ports 80 and 443, and remove access to port 8080. | |
| In order to get SSL working, you’ll first need a DNS name for your server. In | |
| this example, we are calling it your-ci-server-name.com. Make sure to edit the | |
| Table of contents | |
| 18 | |
| ################################## | |
| configuration files we will be listing here to match the domain name you | |
| choose. | |
| Step 2: Then install nginx (sudo apt-get install nginx) and edit your /etc/ | |
| nginx/sites-enabled/default file to look like this: | |
| upstream app_server { | |
| server 127.0.0.1:8080 fail_timeout=0; | |
| } | |
| server { | |
| listen 80 default_server; | |
| listen [::]:80 default_server; | |
| server_name _; | |
| location ^~ /.well-known/acme-challenge/ { | |
| alias /usr/share/nginx/html/.well-known/acme-challenge/; | |
| } | |
| location / { | |
| return 301 https://$host$request_uri; | |
| } | |
| } | |
| Once it is installed, ask nginx to load your changes: service nginx reload | |
| This will let the Let’s Encrypt validation service talk to your server and verify | |
| that you own it. | |
| Step 3: Now you can install the Let’s Encrypt agent and make an SSL | |
| certificate for your server: | |
| sudo apt-get install letsencrypt | |
| Letsencrypt | |
| Follow the steps of the wizard and you will end up with your SSL certificates | |
| in a directory like /etc/letsencrypt/live/your-ci-server-name.com/. | |
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| 19 | |
| ################################## | |
| Now edit again /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default to use those certificates, add | |
| the following lines: | |
| server { | |
| listen 443; | |
| server_name your-ci-server-name.com; | |
| ssl on; | |
| ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/your-ci-server- | |
| name.com/fullchain.pem; | |
| ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/your-ci-server- | |
| name.com/privkey.pem; | |
| location / { | |
| proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For | |
| $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; | |
| proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https; | |
| proxy_set_header Host $http_host; | |
| proxy_redirect off; | |
| if (!-f $request_filename) { | |
| proxy_pass http://app_server; | |
| break; | |
| } | |
| } | |
| } | |
| Then again ask nginx to load your changes: service nginx reload | |
| Step 4: Now you should have SSL, try opening https://your-ci-server- | |
| name.com on your browser. If you followed these steps correctly you will | |
| looking at your brand new encrypted Jenkins installation. | |
| Now that Jenkins is fully installed, keep reading to learn how to add your first | |
| Android and iOS jobs. | |
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| 20 | |
| ################################## | |
| How to Add your First Android Job to Jenkins | |
| Now you’re ready to go. In this demo, we’ll use an example application using | |
| Bugfender SDK in Android. | |
| You’ll obviously want use your own built Android application or library. The | |
| steps for adding your own Android project to Jenkins will be the same. | |
| Building iOS apps? Check out the next section for iOS builds. | |
| First off, you’ll need to prepare the machine to compile and run Android | |
| applications. If you haven’t already installed Jenkins, you can follow the steps | |
| in the previous post to install Jenkins in your server. | |
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| 21 | |
| ################################## | |
| Configuring Android App Builds in Jenkins | |
| Step 1: Install Java JDK | |
| sudo apt-get install java-8-openjdk | |
| Step 2: Install Android SDK | |
| Go to https://developer.android.com/studio/index.html#downloads, and grab | |
| the link listed in the table for Get just the command line tools > Linux. Don’t | |
| download anything, just copy the link. | |
| sudo apt-get install unzip | |
| # here you paste the link you grabbed in the developer.android.com site | |
| sudo -iu jenkins wget https://dl.google.com/android/repository/ | |
| sdk-tools-linux-3859397.zip | |
| sudo -iu jenkins mkdir android-sdk | |
| sudo -iu jenkins unzip sdk-tools-linux-3859397.zip -d android-sdk | |
| # this step is important to accept the Android SDK license | |
| yes |sudo -iu jenkins android-sdk/tools/bin/sdkmanager --licenses | |
| Step 3: Configure Jenkins | |
| Then, log in to Jenkins and configure the Android SDK that you just installed: | |
| Open https://your-ci-server-name.com on your browser. You’ll see something | |
| like this: | |
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| 22 | |
| ################################## | |
| ● Go to Manage Jenkins > Configure System | |
| ● Check “Environment variables” | |
| ● Add Name: ANDROID_HOME | |
| ● Add Value: /var/lib/jenkins/android-sdk | |
| ● Click “Apply” then “Save” | |
| Step 4: Create an Android Job | |
| Now go back to the home page. Click on New Item. Enter your project name | |
| and select “Freestyle project.” | |
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| ################################## | |
| Step 5: Downloading Your Code to Jenkins | |
| Next, you need to add a link to your repository so that Jenkins can download | |
| your code. Specify the Git URL of your repository in the Source Code | |
| Management section. As mentioned, we’re going to use this sample | |
| repository: https://github.com/bugfender/BugfenderSDK-android-sample.git. | |
| If you have a Mercurial or Subversion repository, they work the exact same | |
| way. If you have a private repository, you can also create SSH keys to access | |
| your repository with the git protocol. | |
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| 24 | |
| ################################## | |
| Step 6: Configuring Jenkins Build Triggers | |
| You can also specify Build Triggers that will build the project automatically for | |
| you. It is best to use a hook in order to trigger builds automatically when | |
| someone pushes code to the repository. | |
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| 25 | |
| ################################## | |
| For BitBucket, Gitlab and most Git providers, you can use “Trigger builds | |
| remotely” option. This will give a URL that you can configure as a webhook in | |
| your provider to automatically start a build. | |
| For GitHub users, the easiest is to find and install the “GitHub plugin” (in | |
| Manage Jenkins > Manage Plugins) and a GitHub specific option will appear. | |
| This will install the webhook for you. | |
| Step 7: Build | |
| Once you have the source code in Jenkins, it’s time to build. If your project | |
| has a Gradle wrapper, that’s what you should use. In our case, we’ll create an | |
| Invoke Gradle script build step like this: | |
| If you have an Ant-based project, there is also an Invoke Ant build step or for | |
| maximum flexibility you can use the Execute shell build step. | |
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| 26 | |
| ################################## | |
| Test your build by pressing “Save.” | |
| And that’s it. Your first Android project has been added to Jenkins. Now you | |
| may want to consider accelerating Gradle and setting up automated testing in | |
| Jenkins. | |
| Accelerate Gradle (optional) | |
| If you’re running builds based on Gradle, you can save some build time by | |
| running Gradle as daemon. In order to get it running do the following: | |
| mkdir -p /var/lib/jenkins/.gradle | |
| echo org.gradle.daemon=true | sudo -iu jenkins tee -a /var/lib/ | |
| jenkins/.gradle/gradle.properties | |
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| Running Unit Tests | |
| If you want to run unit tests, you can do so by adding another build step with | |
| the test Gradle task, like this: | |
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| Running Integration Tests | |
| In order to set up UI tests, you will need to run an emulator. Even though | |
| Jenkins has an Android Emulator Plugin, we have found that it has not been | |
| updated and is no longer working with the latest versions of the Android SDK. | |
| Here is our suggested workaround: | |
| Step 1: Download the emulator. In order to list the SDKs available, run: | |
| sudo -iu jenkins android-sdk/tools/bin/sdkmanager --list --verbose | |
| Quick note on selecting the right image for you: x86 based images run faster | |
| but also need hardware acceleration. You might have to enable KVM | |
| acceleration (sudo modprobe kvm) in your server and your server can not be a | |
| virtual machine. For this reason we’re choosing an ARM image, which runs | |
| slower but works. | |
| Step 2: In our case, we’re looking to run our application on Android SDK level | |
| 25, so system-images;android-25;google_apis;armeabi-v7a seems suitable, | |
| then we install it this way: | |
| sudo -iu jenkins android-sdk/tools/bin/sdkmanager 'system- | |
| images;android-25;google_apis;armeabi-v7a' | |
| Step 3: Once installed, we create an Android Virtual Device (an emulator | |
| instance) with it: | |
| echo no | $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/tools/bin/avdmanager -v create avd -- | |
| force --package 'system-images;android-25;google_apis;armeabi-v7a' | |
| --name Android25 --tag google_apis --abi armeabi-v7a | |
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| Step 4: Then we use Supervisord to run the Android emulator as a system | |
| service, always in the background. In order to install it: | |
| sudo apt-get install supervisor | |
| Then, create a configuration file in /etc/supervisor/conf.d/emulator.conf: | |
| [program:emulator] | |
| command=/var/lib/jenkins/android-sdk/emulator/emulator -avd | |
| Android25 -no-window -noaudio -no-boot-anim -accel on -ports | |
| 5556,5557 | |
| autostart=true | |
| user=jenkins | |
| environment=ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=/var/lib/jenkins/android-sdk | |
| Step 5: Once this is done, restart supervisord to apply the changes: | |
| sudo service supervisor restart | |
| The emulator should start in the background. It might take 1-2 minutes. You | |
| will see the emulator device appear in the devices list when it’s ready: | |
| sudo -iu jenkins android-sdk/platform-tools/adb devices | |
| Step 6: In the Jenkins job, add an Execute shell build step like this: | |
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| Code: | |
| ANDROID_SERIAL=emulator-5556 | |
| # wait for emulator to be up and fully booted, unlock screen | |
| $ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools/adb wait-for-device shell 'while [[ - | |
| z $(getprop sys.boot_completed) ]]; do sleep 1; done; input | |
| keyevent 82' | |
| ./gradlew connectedAndroidTest | |
| Suggestions for Next Steps | |
| There are more options like running an Android emulator, installing the | |
| application, and running various tests on it. | |
| In addition, there are some really interesting plugins that you can play with: | |
| ➔ Android Emulator Plugin — At the moment, this plugin is not properly | |
| working with latest Android SDK. But our best guess is that they will fix | |
| it and it will be working again soon. As an alternative, you can use an | |
| older SDK version. | |
| ➔ Android Signing Plugin | |
| ➔ Google Play Android Publisher Plugin | |
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| How to Add Your First iOS Job to Jenkins | |
| In order to build iOS applications you will need to run the server on a macOS | |
| machine. You could install Jenkins directly on a Mac computer, but our | |
| preferred way is to have a small Mac mini machine* in our office devoted to | |
| these tasks. | |
| Even though there are some server hosting options for macOS, they are not | |
| as commonly used as Android hosting options. Our solution is to run Jenkins | |
| in a Linux machine and have a macOS worker machine for the iOS builds. | |
| (*We mention a Mac mini because it’s the cheapest macOS machine you can get. In 2017, | |
| new models started at around $499. But if you have any other Macs laying around, such as | |
| an old MacBook with 1GB of RAM or more, that can work as well.) | |
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| How to Add a Mac Node for iOS Builds | |
| Follow these steps to add a Mac node as a worker node to a running Jenkins | |
| server. If you’ve already done this step, skip to “Configuring iOS jobs” below to | |
| start adding a iOS build to Jenkins. | |
| Please note before we begin: you do not need a public IP address or open | |
| ports on the Mac node side, so it’s a perfectly suitable setup to have the Mac | |
| machine in your home or office, sitting behind a NATed network. | |
| Step 1: Open https://your-ci-server-name.com on Your Browser | |
| You will need to open a port for JNLP. JNLP is a Java protocol to serve | |
| applications to be executed elsewhere. Your worker node will download the | |
| Jenkins worker application using this protocol. | |
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| Step 2: From the Dashboard Go to Configure Jenkins > Configure | |
| Global Security | |
| Specify a Fixed port. In the example below we chose 8081, but you can | |
| choose any port between 1024 and 65535. Make sure this port is open in your | |
| firewall. | |
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| Step 3: Create a New Node In Jenkins > Manage Nodes | |
| Select New Node. | |
| ● Give it a name, for example macmini. It can be anything. | |
| ● Enter a Remote root directory: /tmp | |
| ● Choose Launch method: Java web start | |
| ● Add a Label: mac. (This label will be important when you need to specify | |
| where jobs should be executed each time you configure them. Using this | |
| label, you can make sure Mac projects exclusively run on your mac | |
| machine. More on this below.) | |
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| After saving you’ll see the newly added node in the node list. | |
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| Step 4: Open the Node You Just Created and You Will Find a Command | |
| Copy and paste this command in a terminal in your slave machine. | |
| After a few seconds you’ll get the node up and running in your node list. | |
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| Now your node is ready to accept build jobs! | |
| Step 5: Download Xcode | |
| Since you are planning to build iOS projects, you will need to download Xcode. | |
| You can find it in the app store. | |
| Command line tools: once you have Xcode installed, open a Terminal and | |
| type: | |
| xcode-select --install | |
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| Configuring iOS Jobs | |
| Now that you have a Mac worker machine, you’re ready to start building iOS | |
| apps. | |
| Step 1: Open https://your-ci-server-name.com on your browser and select | |
| New Item | |
| Specify the name of the new job and select Freestyle project: | |
| Step 2: Make sure your build is running exclusively on the Mac machine. | |
| In order to do that, in the General tab, select “Restrict where this project can | |
| be run” and write mac as label expression (this label matches the one we | |
| chose for the Mac worker in the node configuration above). | |
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| Step 3: Under Source Code Management, specify the URL of your repository. | |
| For our example, we’re building the Bugfender SDK sample app: | |
| Step 4: Configuring automated build triggers. | |
| You can select automated triggers for your builds if you don’t want to have to | |
| manually trigger them. Typically, you should configure it so that a new build is | |
| done automatically for every commit or a build is done periodically (eg. | |
| nightly builds): | |
| Step 5: Once the code is downloaded, we need to specify how to build it. | |
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| In the Build section, we will Add a build step of type Execute shell and we will | |
| execute xcodebuild like this: | |
| cd Example # in our example, the project is not in the root of the repository | |
| xcrun xcodebuild -workspace BugfenderExample.xcworkspace \ | |
| -scheme BugfenderExample \ | |
| -sdk iphoneos \ | |
| CODE_SIGN_IDENTITY="" CODE_SIGNING_REQUIRED=NO | |
| This will trigger a build of the application for iOS devices, similar to when you | |
| use the Product > Build for Running in Xcode. | |
| Make sure you add the CODE_SIGN_IDENTITY=”” | |
| CODE_SIGNING_REQUIRED=NO bits in order to prevent Xcode from trying to | |
| sign the built application, otherwise you will need to configure your | |
| provisioning profiles and developer certificate in that machine, which makes | |
| everything a bit more complicated. | |
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| Adding Tests | |
| If you want to run tests, you can set them up with another build step: | |
| Code: | |
| cd Example # again, we need to move directory | |
| mkdir -p output # this directory will contain the output of the | |
| tests | |
| xcrun xcodebuild -workspace BugfenderExample.xcworkspace \ | |
| -scheme "BugfenderExample" \ | |
| -sdk iphonesimulator \ | |
| -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone 6,OS=10.0' \ | |
| -derivedDataPath './output' \ | |
| Test | |
| And that’s it! You’re ready to build and test our iOS sample application: | |
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| Looking for more information about developing apps? Check out: | |
| ● Top Devices for Testing iOS Apps | |
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| Closing Words | |
| Keys to Sustainably Managing Jenkins | |
| Though Jenkins is practical, it hasn’t been easy. | |
| In the beginning, some of our team members tended to ignore Jenkins | |
| because they weren’t used to it. As developers, we recognize that this is | |
| understandable. We have gradually adopted it for more Android and web | |
| projects, and everyone has increasingly gotten more accustomed to it. Now | |
| it’s a tool we rely on for our day-to-day work. | |
| To increase usability, we have made three main improvements: | |
| 1. We originally ran Jenkins on an old MacBook Pro that was gathering | |
| dust in the office. It turns out a laptop is not a great machine for running | |
| a continuous service like this one because it heats up pretty quickly. So | |
| now we run it in a cloud server for the web and Android workloads with | |
| a Mac Mini as worker machine for the iOS and macOS projects. | |
| 2. We use git-flow as a way to structure and collaborate in the git | |
| repository. Together with Jenkins, this helps us find out earlier if | |
| something is not working properly. We can view each functionality | |
| under development separately so we can solve issues before we put | |
| everything together for a release. | |
| 3. We also use Jenkins for continuous delivery. Once we merge something | |
| to the “develop” branch (again using git-flow conventions), the beta | |
| version of the app is built automatically. Once we merge to the master, a | |
| release version of the app is built automatically, ensuring every build | |
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| has passed all CI tests and is built in a consistent manner, leaving less | |
| room for human error. | |
| In the future we would also like to integrate the results of Jenkins builds back | |
| into Bitbucket using the “build status” API. | |
| Tips for Getting Started Today | |
| First, we recommend you start small and grow your setup over time. Start | |
| with only 1-2 things that bring a lot of value to your business. | |
| For example, a good way to start is by making the app builds automatically | |
| and publishing them for testing (somewhere like Google Play Beta, TestFlight | |
| or TestFairy). | |
| This seems simple, but already provides a lot of value by standardizing the | |
| way you build your app, removing the human risk in an error-prone task, and | |
| making beta builds available to everyone in your team. | |
| Second, make sure to allocate some time in your team schedule for running a | |
| CI system and writing tests that work. This might or might not be right for | |
| your team, so it will require some thought and planning. Don’t just don’t do it | |
| because it sounds cool or sounds like “the right thing to do”. | |
| If you understand the benefits, you will be willing to put up with the burden of | |
| fixing it when it doesn’t work (and for sure this will eventually happen). If you | |
| don’t, you will probably end up giving up and then the investment you made by | |
| setting it up in the first place will be lost. This can leave a bad impression. | |
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| Lastly, don’t forget that setting up a CI/CD environment is all about the | |
| bottom line. In the long-term, Jenkins is an investment that will save your | |
| company money by significantly speeding up the build process. If you find | |
| yourself trying to convince your team or your manager—or the suits!—that | |
| Jenkins is the optimal solution for your devops team, don’t forget to crunch | |
| the numbers and show how much money it will save the company in the long | |
| run. | |
| That’s it! If you have questions or want to reach out, we would love | |
| to hear from you. Chat with us directly on our website or email us at | |
| [email protected]. | |
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