pipe_as_code.md

The story so far

So far we've seen a cobbling together of a couple of security tools getting run as tasks by Jenkins. Seems to work pretty well, but...

• The configuration wasn't straightforward
• Difficult to understand without screenshots
• What happens when disaster strikes, taking your Jenkins install out?

A better way

What if we could build this pipeline as a single file?

• Easy to follow
• Easy to change
• Easy to copy between projects
• Easy to backup and restore
• Maintain in project repository as a code file

The basic Jenkinsfile

pipeline {
    agent any

    stages {
        stage('Stage 1') {
            steps {
                // Stage 1 command(s) here
            }
        }
        stage('Stage 2') {
            steps {
                // Stage 2 command(s) here
            }
        }
        ...
        stage('Stage n') {
            steps {
                // Stage n command(s) here
            }
        }
    }
}

Some things to keep in mind:

• Commands need to be delivered differently in Jenkinsfile than the command line
• You may need to perform some searching and trial-and-error to get them right
• Any service account keys or passwords should not appear in configs

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