Handling variable job interdependence

[Gary Weaver]

What is the best way to handle variable job interdependence in Jenkins when working with multiple types of environments?

For example, suppose that we have one job that tests a Rails application and another job that kicks off Maven with a substantial number of dependent Maven builds to build Java, etc. artifacts and test them. Now we want to add another job that will call chef-client on a shared development server that should depends on both jobs having been successful and then run tests against that combined environment.

We'd like to limit the amount of time it takes to test and get the new stuff into the shared development server. The changes that are part of the first Rails job may not require a rebuild/redeploy of the job that calls Maven to rebuild/redeploy a number of snapshots to an artifact repository manager, and vice-versa. We could perhaps have the maven job look at the rails git repository for a version file and vice-versa and use that to trigger the build, but that doesn't setup a dependency to ensure that the dependent job to run chef-client on the shared development server would only occur after both jobs run successfully.

What way have you had the most luck with to handle a similar scenario? If possible, we'd like to continue having the Rails and Java/Maven jobs be separate so they can each report stats on tests, coverage, etc. and indicate a success or failure more quickly, so I don't think combining the jobs is the best option (but I could be wrong).

Thanks in advance for your advice,

Gary