Fast Jenkins development when manipulating static assets
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Kevin Burke
Jun 4, 2014, 7:47:36 PM6/4/14
to jenkin...@googlegroups.com
Hello,
I'm trying to make some changes to Javascript and CSS files in the jenkins project. Currently, this process looks something like:
1. Save the new changes to the file.
2. Run `mvn install -pl war -am -DskipTests && java -jar war/target/jenkins.war `
3. Reload my browser tab and view the changes.
This is a pretty slow feedback loop - it takes roughly 1 minute and 20 seconds between making changes and seeing them, on my 1-year old macbook pro, which means you can make roughly 30 changes an hour, if you are completely focused while Jenkins is building and know exactly what to do when it's not. I believe that the static files are compiled into the binary; if there was some way to edit them outside of the WAR this would imply that the build step could be skipped.
Tom Fennelly pointed me in the direction of intellij which can perform incremental builds; this is an option but would require learning intellij and leaving my preferred text editing tools.
I was curious though if there is a build flag which leaves the static assets alone, allowing them to be edited and linked without having to recompile a WAR? Or maybe a different set of flags I could pass to mvn which would complete builds faster? Or maybe I could comment out the compiled asset link in lib/layout/layout.jelly, and then hard code in lib/layout/layout.jelly a link to a server running on my own computer, with a copy of the JS/CSS in question.
In any event if there are best practices here, or a document which outlines best practices, I would be really grateful. I tried Googling but mostly found answers from people trying to implement incremental builds in their Jenkins instances.
Thanks,
Kevin
Ben Castellucci
Jun 4, 2014, 8:37:12 PM6/4/14
to Jenkins Developers
It's been a while since I posted to this group and I'm not in a position where I can actually try this to verify so bear with me...
Sounds like what you need is to deploy the war exploded. Easiest way to do that us to just unzip it and deploy the resulting directory in tomcat or similar app server. There is probably a way to tell the embedded winstone to deploy the directory rather than the war but just using something like tomcat would be the quickest way.
Anyway, once done all you have to do is edit the static files directly in the directory & refresh your browser.
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Daniel Beck
Jun 4, 2014, 9:16:59 PM6/4/14
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`mvn jenkins-dev:run` in the "war" directory allows you to edit resources and see changes immediately.
Kevin Burke
Jun 8, 2014, 9:46:39 PM6/8/14
to jenkinsci-dev
I tried running
cd war
mvn jenkins-dev:run
and got the following error message:
[ERROR] No plugin found for prefix 'jenkins-dev' in the current project and in the plugin groups [org.apache.maven.plugins, org.codehaus.mojo] available from the repositories [local (/Users/kevin/.m2/repository), repo.jenkins-ci.org (http://repo.jenkins-ci.org/public/), central (http://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2)] -> [Help 1]
org.apache.maven.plugin.prefix.NoPluginFoundForPrefixException: No plugin found for prefix 'jenkins-dev' in the current project and in the plugin groups [org.apache.maven.plugins, org.codehaus.mojo] available from the repositories [local (/Users/kevin/.m2/repository), repo.jenkins-ci.org(http://repo.jenkins-ci.org/public/), central (http://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2)]
at org.apache.maven.plugin.prefix.internal.DefaultPluginPrefixResolver.resolve(DefaultPluginPrefixResolver.java:93)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoDescriptorCreator.findPluginForPrefix(MojoDescriptorCreator.java:260)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoDescriptorCreator.getMojoDescriptor(MojoDescriptorCreator.java:220)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.DefaultLifecycleTaskSegmentCalculator.calculateTaskSegments(DefaultLifecycleTaskSegmentCalculator.java:106)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.DefaultLifecycleTaskSegmentCalculator.calculateTaskSegments(DefaultLifecycleTaskSegmentCalculator.java:86)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.LifecycleStarter.execute(LifecycleStarter.java:85)
at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.doExecute(DefaultMaven.java:361)
at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.execute(DefaultMaven.java:155)
at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.execute(MavenCli.java:584)
at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.doMain(MavenCli.java:213)
at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.main(MavenCli.java:157)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.launchEnhanced(Launcher.java:289)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.launch(Launcher.java:229)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.mainWithExitCode(Launcher.java:415)
at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:356)
I tried searching around briefly and found https://github.com/jenkinsci/maven-hudson-dev-plugin, but not sure this helps much as there's no information about what I should be running instead. I also saw this in the download list on first invocation:
Which suggests that something is being downloaded and maybe I am just not invoking it correctly. I tried "mvn maven-jenkins-dev:run" and still got failures.
Some kind of a development wiki would be really nice - is there such a thing?
--
Kevin Burke | Claremont McKenna
phone: 925.271.7005 | kburke.org
Kevin Burke
Jun 8, 2014, 9:51:01 PM6/8/14
to jenkinsci-dev
Ah. Turns out I need "mvn hudson-dev:run". I'll add an issue.
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