I am in a situation where I have one Build Server box which is to carry out all continuous integration and manage our maven repository. The box works as follows:
There is one maven repository which is hosted through Apache Server as a URL for developers to use
All Jenkins jobs (including release jobs) run mvn install so that artifacts are kept in this one repository.
I would like to get rid of the Apache server and run Nexus on this same box to manage and host repositories, however I have the following questions/ideas:
With Nexus and Jenkins on the same box, will it mean that I will have to manage two repositories, one where maven installs an artifact to a local repository, and one where maven deploys an artifact to nexus? Would it be possible to have Nexus manage the "mvn install" repository also? How can I make sure we don't run out of disk space on the server very very quickly all the time?
Thanks
Added as response to comments: Thank you both, I am thinking I will just set the Jenkins jobs and release plugin goals to mvn package deploy:deploy in order to skip the install phase, that way, artifacts go directly from the target directory to Nexus. However I guess the Jenkins job will require a local repository from which to use depedencies which will get copied from Nexus to the maven local repository during the build, I am not sure if this can be avoided though.
mvn install installs in the local repository
mvn deploy installs to the remote repository
these semantics are defined in the lifecycle and map to different plugins. Their implementations are different.
You don't have to manage the local repository. Actually for some if not most jobs you might even want to define it localized to the job (with the 'Use private Maven repository' option) instead of to the user who is running the job, especially that you plan to use nexus for repository.
You will have to change your jobs to use mvn deploy instead.
How can I make sure we don't run out of disk space on the server very
very quickly all the time?
Configure Jenkins/Nexus. Discard old builds and disable automatic artifact archiving. Both settings can be found in the Jenkins job-configuration. Also you could delete old artifacts automatically from Nexus using Scheduling Tasks.
There is no need to install the artifacts into the local maven repository when using Jenkins/Nexus on a dedicated server.
Related
I'm trying to understand some concepts about maven. This is the my scenario:
Almost every time I deploy a project, i.e Cloudstack I type:
mvn install
I got some failures like unable to connect to some repositories or that some tests just failed. I don't understand why some tests can fail if the code has been recently downloaded.
My idea is to create a local server repository so maven won't connect to remote servers but to a server that is in the same network with the packages that the application needs.
Is possible to do that? or does these problems are produced by other cause?
See Maven, Introduction to Repositories:
There are strictly only two types of repositories: local and remote. The local repository refers to a copy on your own installation that is a cache of the remote downloads, and also contains the temporary build artifacts that you have not yet released.
Remote repositories refer to any other type of repository, [...]. These repositories might be a truly remote repository set up by a third party to provide their artifacts for downloading [...]. Other "remote" repositories may be internal repositories set up on a file or HTTP server within your company, used to share private artifacts between development teams and for releases.
mvn install does not deploy your project's artifact (at least not in the sense of Maven's deploy, see Introduction to the Build Lifecycle). It does:
install the package into the local repository, for use as a dependency in other projects locally
whereas mvn deploy is:
done in an integration or release environment, copies the final package to the remote repository for sharing with other developers and projects
„unable to connect to some repositories“ and „some tests just failed“ are two different kind of errors. It's impossible to tell more without any relevant part(s) of the output of the build where these occurred.
What I want to achieve is two step build automation
Step A - Build & Upload to artifact repo
Create build job in Jenkins which will create build after every check-in
Upload every successful build on Archiva server
Step B - Get latest artifact & deploy on required servers
After every desired interval, get latest build from Archiva
Deploy build uploaded in Step A.2 to dev/qa/stg server by unzipping its content in web server directory.
I was able to do achieve Step A by using maven goals in my project pom.xml but any idea/suggestions/best practices for Step B.
I understand/agree, I would need two different jobs having different pom.xml, question remains how will we get latest war from repo in pom and how will be deploy that latest war on remote server by unzipping it, as tomcat there does not have admin module.
I would deploy not a jar/war artifact on step 2, but would create a RPM that contains a needed files structure.
With maven it's quite easy to do with a maven rpm plugin
3-4. Nexus has built in YUM repository support, so you can use yum to install the latest rpm version
So I've always found it better to separate the builds and the deploys.
The schedule for those can be independently managed then.
Assuming you are using linux on the servers you could use the ssh-plugins in jenkins to download the artifact in archiva
wget http://server/repository/internal/group/artifact/version/artifact-version.jar
As for the deploy, you could sftp them over to the deploy server also using jenkins SFTP plugin.
I am lacking some basic understanding of using a repository manager for our projects. What I don't know is how, if I use a repository manager, if I run a local install command Maven doesn't deploy the package to something like a shared Nexus instance. I seem to have some confusion between local repositories and shared ones when using a repository manager.
Apologies for the naivity and for not testing this myself. We have started versioning our application and using a shared file system approach to getting artifacts and are left with a few questions about what, within the scope of what we are currently doing, will be gained by using a repository manager instead. We do use TeamCity as a build server which is deploying to that currently used file system. I need to know some answers to a few questions before POCing a repo manager.
install is specific to the local repository.
From Maven's point of view whether a remote repository is hosted by your repository manager or is completely external has no relevance - when you're adding your artifact to any kind of remote repository, you need to use the deploy plugin (or release for non-trivial deployments).
Repository managers usually generate instructions on configuring your projects for deployment to a hosted repo.
maven defines a lifecycle (clean, compile, install, deploy...). There are default mappings when you execute "mvn install". So maven knows which plugins to execute for that maven goal.
The Introduction page gives a good overview what happens for each phase (goal) and what the default plugins are: https://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-the-lifecycle.html
In your case: mvn install will copy the artifacts into the local maven repository to be shared by other projects you have locally.
If you want to share artifacts with other developers on other locations "mvn deploy" will copy the artifacts to the remote repository. Note you need to configure the distributionManagement section in the pom.xml to be able to do that.
The normal maven setup should look like this:
project -> local repository -> private remote repository -> public remote repository
Project: in the simplest case your project consists of source files and a configuration file (pom.xml). The project may depend on third party libraries like junit. The jar files of the libraries are not stored in your project directory, only the information which jars are needed.
mvn package
This command creates a jar out of your project an places it in the target/ folder of your project.
Local Repository: This is a maven repository stored locally on your machine. It normally resides in ~/.m2/repository/. Every dependency you are using in your project will be stored in this repository. On compiling your project, maven will use the jar files from this location.
mvn install
This command creates a jar file and copies it to your local repository: ~/.m2/repository/groupId/artifactId/version/project.jar. Now you can use this jar in different independent projects as a dependency, but only your machine.
Private Remote Repository: Most of the time this is a Nexus in your company network. This server allows to share the build project across developers. Your TeamCity server builds the jar and copies it to your nexus server. Beyond this the nexus server works like a proxy, e.g. A Developer needs junit-4.1.1.jar, so the server looks for it on public remote repositories and caches it.
mvn deploy
This command builds a jar and sends it to your nexus server ('to your private remote repository') After that every developer inside your company network can access the jar.
Public Remote Repository: These are repositories available on the internet which contain several jar files, e.g. maven.codehaus.org
Summary:
If you call mvn compile maven looks for the dependencies in your local repository. If maven can't find them, it will ask the (private/public) remote repository, and copy the files to the local repository.
You should not synchronize a local repository over network, since this type of repository is not targeted at such use and may break in some obscure way.
What you need is a mvn deploy - copies the final package to the remote repository for sharing with other developers and projects
mvn install you tried will just build and install the project in your local ~/.m2 repository. It will_not publish the artifacts to your nexus repository which you have configured.
Both install and deploy are valid build phase - meaning it executes all previous phases. Please refer to Maven docs below for more understanding.
From maven documentation:
the default Maven lifecycle has the following build phases (for a complete list of the build phases, refer to the Lifecycle Reference):
validate - validate the project is correct and all necessary information is available
compile - compile the source code of the project
test - test the compiled source code using a suitable unit testing framework. These tests should not require the code be packaged or deployed
package - take the compiled code and package it in its distributable format, such as a JAR.
integration-test - process and deploy the package if necessary into an environment where integration tests can be run
verify - run any checks to verify the package is valid and meets quality criteria
**install** - install the package into the local repository, for use as a dependency in other projects locally
**deploy** - done in an integration or release environment, copies the final package to the remote repository for sharing with other developers and projects.
Is it possible in someway to configure my build job such that rather than picking maven artifacts from the central repo , it picks them from the local maven repo. residing on my system?
NOTE - I want others to be able to run build jobs via jenkins , while pointing to my fusion repo.
Thanks
If you want to share a maven repository with multiple users I recommend to use a repository manager see maven repository management. The mostly used once are Artifactory and Nexus. This can handle the central repo as well as own managed repositories by ThirdParties or by your self. They also work as proxy to reduce the bandwidth used in your organisation.
Much easier method to achieve local-only maven builds.
Just use the offline flag (-o):
mvn -o clean package
Maven will build off your local repo directly and will not pull down updates.
I'm trying to setup a complete CI server, but I struggle on some points.
Currently, my system work as follow :
I commit local changes on my local GIT repository, then push to the GIT repository on the CI server
I then have a jenkins job triggered by the SCM change, who run a clean install and by doing so executes all my Junit and Jstestdriver test (via a local jstd server). This job deploy the snapshot artifact to a repository on my nexus repository
I installed M2-release-plugin for jenkins, and setup my pom.xml accordingly using maven-release-plugin. When i click on "Perform maven release" in jenkins job page, jenkins run mvn release:prepare release:perform, thus creating a tag in my git repo (say v000001) and deploying a versionned artifact on my nexus repository.
I don't really know if this process is fine, but i guess so...
My problem is that I want to deliver the versionned artifact in my nexus repo (say "artifact-v0000001.war") in my production tomcat. But I can't figure out how to do it.
When I do "mvn release:prepare release:perform tomcat:deploy" it deploys the new SNAPSHOT artifact built ... I don't want to do this, I want to reuse the artifact from the nexus repository.
Is there a way to doing this using a tool (maven/jenkins plugin, or external)?
Basically, I want to fetch the last release artifact on the repository, and send it to the tomcat manager for dereploying the webapp.
Do I need to setup a delivery job separated from the release job?
Jenkins, especially when combined with a tool like ANT, can do just about anything. It has a lot of plug-ins, and you can always write a script and incorporate it into a Jenkins build. Currently, I use Jenkins to deploy web applications to Windows IIS servers. What you could do here is have a Jenkins build that has your SVN path set in the source control section so that it fetches the latest version when you trigger the build. From there it should be fairly trivial to write an ANT script that copies it over the existing JAR in Tomcat, which will automatically restart it.
Your problem is that you are probably using the Jenkins release plugin, not the "m2 release plugin". The problem with the standard plugin is that it performs the regular build, saves the artifacts, then performs the release. It will then try to deploy the wrong artifacts that it created from the regular build.
The m2 release plugin solves this particular problem. There are some tricky workaround for this problem, but that's how it stands at the moment until this feature is implemented: https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-11120 (log in and vote for it!)