Automated Jenkins Plugin/Dependency Management

[Jason Kulatunga]

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 '<install plugin="favorite@1.7" />'

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 Engineer

Adobe

[Daniel Beck]

> On 11.08.2016, at 15:14, Jason Kulatunga <darkm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> we've also verified that 'installNecessaryPlugins' does not actually respect the version parameter.

As the plugin update site metadata does not support arbitrary versions, it'll always install the one present in the JSON -- which is the latest compatible with your release.

This may work for you, but AFAIK still requires manual dependency resolution (we added it for UI uploads, but not for the CLI):

https://ci.jenkins.io/cli/command/install-plugin

[Daniel Beck]

> On 11.08.2016, at 15:14, Jason Kulatunga <darkm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

> 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.

Note that pinning doesn't prevent a plugin from being upgraded -- it's related to Jenkins 1.x plugin bundling, and means that a plugin that's also bundled (e.g. subversion) won't get overwritten by the version bundled with Jenkins on startup. In Jenkins 2, it's basically irrelevant.

[Slide]

Kind of off topic, but it would really be nice to be able to "pin" a plugin to a specific version that won't get upgraded.

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[Baptiste Mathus]

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

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[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

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[Michael Kobit]

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.

[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 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.

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 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. 

[Michael Kobit]

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?

[Jason Kulatunga]

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

[Michael Kobit]

My fault explaining that

I know that I can extract it using the jar command, but I don't get the same "unzipped" output as running java -jar jenkins.war.

It looks like this happens because of some magic in https://github.com/jenkinsci/extras-executable-war that handles the unpacking and bootstrapping.

I'm wondering, is there a similar way to unpack the jenkins.war without actually running the service, so that I can then programmatically configure the JENKINS_HOME.

This might be the wrong approach or the totally wrong idea. I was probably going to move in the same direction that you said with using the https://github.com/jenkinsci/gradle-jpi-plugin to handle plugin dependency resolution, but plugins are not the only thing I want to configure. The Groovy init.d type scripts work, but it requires Jenkins to hit a certain lifecycle stage to run.

Jenkins just doesn't seem to lend itself well to configuration as code, but maybe I'm missing something. 

[Maciej Wiczynski]

I found this thread via http://blog.thesparktree.com/post/149039600544/you-dont-know-jenkins-part-1.  I'm new to gradle/jenkins and was trying to do something similar with my setup.  I'm running into problem where some plugins are not found.  I'm not sure how to find or specify where plugins can be found.. this is one error I'm getting about rebuild plugin as example:

 * What went wrong:

       A problem occurred configuring root project 'jenkins'.

       > Failed to notify project evaluation listener.

          > Could not resolve all dependencies for configuration ':jenkinsPlugins'.

             > Could not find any matches for org.jenkins-ci.plugins:rebuild:latest.release as no versions of org.jenkins-ci.plugins:rebuild are available.

        Searched in the following locations:

            http://repo.jenkins-ci.org/releases/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/maven-metadata.xml

            http://repo.jenkins-ci.org/releases/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/

            https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/maven-metadata.xml

            https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/

            file:/var/lib/jenkins/.m2/repository/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/maven-metadata.xml

            file:/var/lib/jenkins/.m2/repository/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/

            https://repo.jenkins-ci.org/public/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/maven-metadata.xml

            https://repo.jenkins-ci.org/public/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/

        Required by:

            :jenkins:unspecified

          > Could not resolve all dependencies for configuration ':jenkinsPlugins'.

             > Could not find any matches for org.jenkins-ci.plugins:rebuild:latest.release as no versions of org.jenkins-ci.plugins:rebuild are available.

        Searched in the following locations:

            http://repo.jenkins-ci.org/releases/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/maven-metadata.xml

            http://repo.jenkins-ci.org/releases/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/

            https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/maven-metadata.xml

            https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/

            file:/var/lib/jenkins/.m2/repository/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/maven-metadata.xml

            file:/var/lib/jenkins/.m2/repository/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/

            https://repo.jenkins-ci.org/public/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/maven-metadata.xml

            https://repo.jenkins-ci.org/public/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/rebuild/

I looked in https://repo.jenkins-ci.org/releases/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/ and don't see rebuild plugin listed.

I did find it in https://updates.jenkins-ci.org/current/update-center.json but don't see how to set deps in build.gradle file.

I have tried adding another maven url block under repositories block using different urls, didn't work.  

Thanks.

-Maciej

[Maciej Wiczynski]

So.. figures once I posted I found a possible solution.  If I set the group(via cookbook attribute) I get a build.gradle that seems to work, snippet of rebuild dependency: 

jenkinsPlugins([

        group: 'com.sonyericsson.hudson.plugins.rebuild',

        name: 'rebuild',

        version: 'latest.release'

      ])

So I guess my question is, is there an easy way to find the group for all the plugins that don't use 'org.jenkins-ci.plugins'? I think I can look in https://updates.jenkins-ci.org/current/update-center.json and find the group for each plugin. If this isn't correct way to go about it I would appreciate tips on what I should be doing.

Thanks.

-Maciej

[Daniel Beck]

> On 14.10.2016, at 22:03, Maciej Wiczynski <loa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I looked in https://repo.jenkins-ci.org/releases/org/jenkins-ci/plugins/ and don't see rebuild plugin listed.
> I did find it in https://updates.jenkins-ci.org/current/update-center.json but don't see how to set deps in build.gradle file.
> I have tried adding another maven url block under repositories block using different urls, didn't work.

As the update center JSON tells you, its groupId is not org.jenkins-ci.plugins.

https://repo.jenkins-ci.org/releases/com/sonyericsson/hudson/plugins/rebuild/rebuild/

[Daniel Beck]

> On 15.10.2016, at 20:47, Daniel Beck <m...@beckweb.net> wrote:
>
> As the update center JSON tells you, its groupId is not org.jenkins-ci.plugins.
>
> https://repo.jenkins-ci.org/releases/com/sonyericsson/hudson/plugins/rebuild/rebuild/

Missed the newest response, sorry about that.

> On 14.10.2016, at 22:12, Maciej Wiczynski <loa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> is there an easy way to find the group for all the plugins that don't use 'org.jenkins-ci.plugins'? I think I can look in https://updates.jenkins-ci.org/current/update-center.json and find the group for each plugin. If this isn't correct way to go about it I would appreciate tips on what I should be doing.

Extracting the group from the 'gav' elements is probably the best (automated) approach. Otherwise, repo.jenkins-ci.org has a simple search interface, look for the artifactId and version and it'll show you the full path.

The problem with the former, of course, is when plugins change groupId, which can happen occasionally (so a specific version may actually not be present in the groupId used for the newest version of the plugin).

It's not clear to me what kind of problem is solved here. Why not just download specific plugin versions from the well-known URLs on the update site? It's linked from every plugin wiki page…

[Maciej Wiczynski]

Thanks Daniel.  I was just following the code in Jason's example.  If there is way to download plugins differently then I'd be glad to use that method.  I was originally using the chef jenkins cookbook which has a resource to download plugins via url( see https://github.com/chef-cookbooks/jenkins/blob/master/libraries/plugin.rb).  I wanted to try a different method than the cookbook to see if I could get better control over plugin version.  If you have any suggestions/pointers to get me going in direction of using urls I'd appreciate it.  I may end up going back to the jenkins cookbook if this proves to be too much trouble.

-Maciej