Plugin configuration/dependency management

[Barry Laffoy]

Hi

Is there any way of managing the plugins installed in Jenkins other than through the GUI interface?

Ideally I would like to be able to define a list of plugins (names, URLs, version numbers) in a text file, which would be read by Jenkins and ensure that the correct plugins are installed (and warn/error of any discrepancies or extraneous plugins). Ideally, something similar to a `pom.xml`, or node's `package.json`, or python's `requirements.txt`.

I'd be happy with such a tool if it were a standalone executable, or another Jenkins plugin, or a feature of some Config Management tool (e.g. Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt).

I know that plugins can be installed by copying .hpi/.jpi files to ~jenkins/plugins/. This works for backing up, mostly, but is far from ideal. Problems I have with this:

* plugin bloat: no record of when/why a plugin was installed or if it should be removed; over time a large number of unused plugins acccumulate
* version drift: no record of when/why a plugin was updated, or why a particular version was changed; in most cases you just use the most up to date version from when you installed the plugin, and upgrading in the future is difficult to track
* custom plugins: if I've recompiled a .hpi file for a fork of a plugin I've made, it's tough to tell the difference between my version and the version in the update-center

I'm a big fan of infrastructure-as-code. Particularly, I like being able to see a history of infrastructure changes in a source controlled repository. Source control of Jenkins plugins would allow

* informative commit messages
* code review for why plugins are being added
* easier rollbacks to previous good states when upgrading

Being able to deploy a Jenkins master from configuration would provide a bunch of other benefits:

* easier to deploy new Jenkins masters (for testing, disaster recovery, complex multi-master configurations)
* indicate the source of the plugin (i.e. the update-center, a github repo, or an internal artifact manager)
* indicate the correct version to use

Is there any existing tool or framework that would provide all of this? Or will I have to roll my own?

Thanks!

[Victor Martinez]

Hi,

 You already spotted those configuration management tools, I've been using Puppet and Chef:

  - https://github.com/chef-cookbooks/jenkins 

  - https://forge.puppetlabs.com/rtyler/jenkins

I prefer Chef since you can configure your ssh slaves as part of the cookbook, when in puppet you only can configure swarm connections.

As you can read in the README.md there are some examples of how to use plugins, versioning them and also add configuration files in case they are not part of the global config!

If you want to go further, why don't you try docker? There is a plugin.txt file which might help you to install plugins, it's another paradigm actually, so you will need to rethink how to use it.

- http://jenkins-ci.org/content/official-jenkins-lts-docker-image

custom plugins, you could use https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/UpdateSites+Manager+plugin in order to define your own Update Site, actually Jenkins provide another one called experimental. It might help you if you would like to archive those artifacts (hpi/jpi) in your internal artifact repo.

I hope it helps

Cheers

[Barry Laffoy]

Hi Victor

Thanks for the response.

I reckoned Chef or Puppet was the best bet, but I didn't want to prejudice any answers.

I'll check out the chef cookbooks you linked. I couldn't find much on the web about provisioning Jenkins with Chef or Puppet, so I was wary about going down one of those paths before I found out if other people had been successful.

Cheers

[Victor Martinez]

I didn't mention, you could use Ansible:

- https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-role-jenkins

If you haven't worked with chef/puppet previously, you might find ansible quicker to learn. That's my POV. 

Cheers