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Jenkins Is Getting Old

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Re: Jenkins Is Getting Old

#331

Post by boleary-gl »

majkinetor wrote: post #311
lbotos wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused at what you mean here. If you want to run things on the host you can run a bash runner, and you have full access to the machine. What do you want to do on the host?

There is gitlab-runner exec command which takes a ci yaml file and executes it, but it sux (A LOT), so they deprecated it. This is not the same as taking a bash/powershell script and running it locally on runners host because gitlab inject into shell some stuff like secrets, env vars, artifacts, caches etc. Some errors are VERY hard to reproduce when not on local executing environment.

GitLab Product Manager for Verify (CI) here.

I agree! I think that we have lots of improvements to make here. One feature that is underutilized (more on that in a second) that tries to answer this is our [1] interactive web terminal that lets you connect directly to the container or runner that is running a job. Would love feedback on how that could maybe help here.

Now, having said that there are two issues still open that are top of mind for making this minimal viable change much more usable. One is making the Web Terminal work in our shared runner pool on GitLab.com [2]. This is obviously required for users of .com who don't want to bring their own runner and something we're working closely with our Production and Security teams on making a reality.

In addition, there is a command today of `gitlab-runner exec` that allows you (in theory) to install the GitLab runner locally and execute it on your development machine. However, we technically depreciated that and have plans to re-implement it in a more useful way. [3]

[1] https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/interactive_web_terminal/

[2] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/56073

[3] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/issues/2797

Re: Jenkins Is Getting Old

#332

Post by ownagefool »

jl-gitlab wrote: post #259
ownagefool wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gitlab and Concourse both support windows runners as far as I can see. They also don't require docker, but you might actually want that for most of your jobs. My biggest gripe about gitlab is you can't schedule a job in code, and I suppose it's less then ideal to support 3rd party repos in hosted gitlab, but I don't know why you'd not use it as an SCM. The bigger problem, would be using a group job that triggers a bu…

Hey there, CI/CD product director here. We do allow scheduling/editing/deleting pipelines via code, at least via an API: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/pipeline_schedules.html Or are you looking more for putting the values in the .gitlab-ci.yml itself? This is something we have thought a bit about, but it gets strange with branches and merges where it's not always clear you're doing what the user wants as the differe…

Indeed I meant in the .gitlab-ci.yml. I would assume you'd name the branch in the schedule, and if not default to the default branch. Similarly, it's sad you can't set a variable in one stage and have it available in another, and there's a couple of other niggles that one needs to work around.

With that said, the product is fantastic and I'm just pointing out some flaws so the parent understands I've actually used the product, and not just a fanboy yelling. :)

Re: Jenkins Is Getting Old

#333

Post by user5994461 »

jl-gitlab wrote: post #272
staticsnow wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you on plugins, and I agree they are problematic. I went back and forth on whether to include this or not TBH. I'll give you a couple of examples of use cases for plugins: We have an artifact repo that can store NPM, Python and other artifacts (Nexus if you're interested). I wrote a plugin for TeamCity that can grab artifacts from a build and upload them to the repository. Obviously this can be done in a scrip…

Thanks for sharing, this is really great feedback.

If you work at gitlab, you can download the free version of TeamCity on their website. Setup a few projects and it will be obvious what it does better.

You may want to try a C#, java, python and a go projects to see the differences, with slaves on Windows and Linux. There are some pretty tight integrations for some of these.

Re: Jenkins Is Getting Old

#334

Post by hardwaresofton »

Robin_f wrote: post #326
hardwaresofton wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very easy to make multi-repo stuff, I've also wrote about it: https://vadosware.io/post/fun-with-gitlab-ci Also, running pipelines in different projects and whenever you want is accessible from the web interface... It could be cleaner, but IMO adding even more syntax to the YAML file can also be a rabbit hole -- CURL from the script section seems like not a bad middle ground. Am I misunderstanding what is b…

This post seems very focused on projects with just a single developer. The "recognizing and tagging" versions for example completely breaks down when you have multiple people commit and merging things to master and multiple pipelines running that are trying to recognize and tag versions.

The post is very much not complete -- there is much more a team would have to standardize to fully take a set up like this into production, bu I'm not sure that it "completely breaks down" with more people contributing.

As long as there is some release coordination, a system like this can work. In particular, I've found that the lightest way to get a system like this working for x > 1 developers is to have a release-vX.X.X branch for releases that are going out and vX.X.X tags for releases once they have actually landed.

You mention the recognizing and tagging versions being an issue -- are you imagining a world where two people are releasing something at the same time? I'm not exactly sure

If we assume that what that posts suggests isn't feasible, regardless of how you deploy and do your CI, if your release process can be done by a human, it can likely be automated. Gitlab CI is most robust and yet easiest to understand automated CI system I've seen for making that happen (at least that was my intended point).

Re: Jenkins Is Getting Old

#335

Post by paulcarroty »

boleary-gl wrote: post #303
paulcarroty wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NO debug overs ssh, why I still use CircleCI.

GitLab Product Manager here I'm not super familiar with Circle CI's SSH debugging, but we do have a feature called "Interactive Web Terminals" https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/interactive_web_terminal/ . This allows you to connect to a terminal in the running job on GitLab CI for debugging. Would love to understand how this does or does not meet your use-case here.

Great, seems it does the job. 'Cause sometimes 'test passed'/'test failed' isn't enough, you should go deeper.

CircleCI supports SSH connection for max 2h, then shutdown the task.

Re: Jenkins Is Getting Old

#336

Post by owenmehegan »

mechastorm wrote: post #183
jennbriden wrote: post #142

Hello, I see a lot of great feedback in this post. I am a product manager working at CloudBees, the primary corporate sponsor of Jenkins. Jenkins is now in the Continuous Delivery Foundation as well. While it is easy to bash on an inanimate object, there are some very dedicated and empathetic people who care deeply about the project. Some of those people do this work in their off-hours and some to this work as part o…

I think its already mentioned about Jenkins Configuration as Code. But in general stick to a configuration method, I have had to migrate from JJB > groovy scripts > init.d groovy > Jenkinsfile. And can we PLEASE open up the issues tab on the Github repos especially for plugins. There is currently no way to provide any feedback/report issues on these plugins because the "issues" tab is disabled. Our current options ar…

Jenkins has used Jira for bug tracking since before GitHub existed, so although the project's code and all plugins are now managed on GH, bug tracking continues to live in Jira. Anyone can create an account and add issues here: https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/secure/Dashboard.jspa All plugins track issues there, so you just put the appropriate plugin, or "core" for Jenkins itself, in the 'component' field and the issue should be assigned to the right person.

Re: Jenkins Is Getting Old

#337

Post by owenmehegan »

digitalsushi wrote: post #307
jennbriden wrote: post #142

Hello, I see a lot of great feedback in this post. I am a product manager working at CloudBees, the primary corporate sponsor of Jenkins. Jenkins is now in the Continuous Delivery Foundation as well. While it is easy to bash on an inanimate object, there are some very dedicated and empathetic people who care deeply about the project. Some of those people do this work in their off-hours and some to this work as part o…

cloudbees shop here - i can say that because of how fragile the plugin environment is, we never, ever update our jenkins - we cant, we would spill money out the instant it went offline. so every few years we just roll out a new jenkins and force the devs to migrate to it, slowly, also over the course of years. every half a decade the cycle restarts. ok, we have been through exactly one of these, but it's a full cycle…

CloudBees Support Engineer here! We offer a free Assisted Update service to customers for exactly this reason. We will examine your existing Jenkins installation, compare it with the target version you would be updating to, and outline any possible snags that you would need to address during the process. We also help ensure that you have a good backup so that you can roll back if need be, and if you are a Platinum customer a Support Engineer will hang out on a conference call while you perform the update. We've done loads of successful updates with customers this way, I think it's one of the most useful services we offer. Updates don't have to be as painful as you've described!

Re: Jenkins Is Getting Old

#338

Post by amai »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #9

Disclaimer: I'm pretty biased towards Gitlab -- write about the things you can do it from time to time and they gave me some free swag once. Best CI I've ever used is Gitlab CI[0]. The runner is completely open source[1] and you can use your own runner with your gitlab.com (or local instance) projects -- set it up in an autoscaling group[2] for savings. I run https://runnerrental.club but Gitlab also recently release…

Is Gitlab CI available as standalone solution? I don‘t need a source code solution, just an CI solution.

Re: Jenkins Is Getting Old

#339

Post by saidmasoud »

cpitman wrote: post #226
chinhodado wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's what I needed. For example, I wanted to trigger a job only for a merge request, and only if the target branch of the merge request is e.g. master. Is that possible? Trigger a job only for a MR is possible, but I don't know how to further do the later branch filtering.

When using a merge_request pipeline, GitLab defines additional variables for the run. That includes `CI_MERGE_REQUEST_TARGET_BRANCH_NAME`. So it would look something like this: job: only: refs: - merge_requests variables: - $CI_MERGE_REQUEST_TARGET_BRANCH_NAME == "master"

We generally only merge into master at my org, but I didn't know you could conditionally trigger jobs using an equality expression on a GitLab-provided variable. I'll have to keep this in the back pocket for future reference, thanks! Any docs that describe this feature in more detail?

Re: Jenkins Is Getting Old

#340

Post by grzesiekb »

amai wrote: post #338
hardwaresofton wrote: post #9

Disclaimer: I'm pretty biased towards Gitlab -- write about the things you can do it from time to time and they gave me some free swag once. Best CI I've ever used is Gitlab CI[0]. The runner is completely open source[1] and you can use your own runner with your gitlab.com (or local instance) projects -- set it up in an autoscaling group[2] for savings. I run https://runnerrental.club but Gitlab also recently release…

Is Gitlab CI available as standalone solution? I don‘t need a source code solution, just an CI solution.

If you prefer to host your code on GitHub, it is fine! You can use GitLab CI/CD the way that you host your code on GitHub, but build, test and deploy from GitLab. Take a look at https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/github/!

This is not a full standalone mode, because GitLab CI is a built-in solution that can not be easily separated, but might work for you.

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