Pipeline: Hos to test them locally

[Victor Martinez]

Hi there,

Just wondering if there is any new supported feature of testing Jenkinsfile, aka pipelines, locally, if so, where can i find some examples/docs? I want to get rid of the manual and tedious process of pushing changes to my repo then look at the jebkibs job andsee whether it does what i coded. I'd like to speed up my development with lets say some TDD. If no, will it be supported in the near future? Or it doesnt make sense?

Thanks guys

[Michael Kobit]

You can use the "Replay" option, which might help you iterate a little bit faster. There isn't really a good way to test and validate that your pipeline is correct other than just running it.

https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-33925 is open for a test framework for Jenkinsfile.

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[Victor Martinez]

I'll follow that jira ticket then. Thanks Michael

[Peter McNab]

The (far from perfect) method we've been using is to use a "testing" pipeline job.  Rather than fetching the project from source, it is an explicit script that uses a "load" to load in the "real" pipeline script from my development environment (which is available via NFS).

sourcepath = <PATH TO MY SRC DIR>'
node('master') {
  load "${sourcepath}/Jenkinsfile"
}

That allows me to just save locally and run the job.

Even better, I can then run the job using the jenkins-cli.jar and see the output in my shell which removes the need to interact with the jenkins UI altogether.

java -jar jenkins-cli.jar -s $JENKINS_URL build $JOB_NAME -s -v

Of course you have to be disciplined about checking in WIP and making sure that all files your pipeline is trying to use checked in eventually, and there are some cases where the above method acts a little differently than when pulling from SCM.  Also be sure to check "Use Groovy Sandbox" since pipeline scripts coming from SCM have that set. 

Pete

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[Torsten Reinhard]

Hi,

we were also wondering why there´s that pipeline-as-code approach available and strongly recommended everywhere - without any traditional support (automated tests) of developing clean code for it.

So we worked around that by doing the following:
- we have a Test Jenkins instance running where the pipeline code is tested first. pushes or released versions only go to productive Jenkins if well tested
- we "mocked" the pipeline DSL methods which enables us to at least do some basic groovy syntax and compilation tests. So far, Mockito, JUnit, Spock helps us a little.
- we developed some simple "integration-test" pipelines where we can test the pipeline code first - before testing or using it with real-life projects.

It´s currently a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process to get things running - but we are looking forward to a lot of improvements coming soon.

Good luck,

Torsten