Hi Victor Thanks for the response.
I reckoned Chef or Puppet was the best bet, but I didn't want to prejudice any answers. I'll check out the chef cookbooks you linked. I couldn't find much on the web about provisioning Jenkins with Chef or Puppet, so I was wary about going down one of those paths before I found out if other people had been successful. Cheers On Friday, 25 September 2015 11:59:21 UTC+1, Victor Martinez wrote: > > Hi, > > You already spotted those configuration management tools, I've been using > Puppet and Chef: > > - https://github.com/chef-cookbooks/jenkins > - https://forge.puppetlabs.com/rtyler/jenkins > > I prefer Chef since you can configure your ssh slaves as part of the > cookbook, when in puppet you only can configure swarm connections. > > As you can read in the README.md there are some examples of how to use > plugins, versioning them and also add configuration files in case they are > not part of the global config! > > If you want to go further, why don't you try docker? There is a plugin.txt > file which might help you to install plugins, it's another paradigm > actually, so you will need to rethink how to use it. > > - http://jenkins-ci.org/content/official-jenkins-lts-docker-image > > custom plugins, you could use > https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/UpdateSites+Manager+plugin in > order to define your own Update Site, actually Jenkins provide another one > called experimental. It might help you if you would like to archive those > artifacts (hpi/jpi) in your internal artifact repo. > > I hope it helps > > Cheers > > On Friday, 25 September 2015 12:45:46 UTC+2, Barry Laffoy wrote: >> >> Hi >> >> Is there any way of managing the plugins installed in Jenkins other than >> through the GUI interface? >> >> Ideally I would like to be able to define a list of plugins (names, URLs, >> version numbers) in a text file, which would be read by Jenkins and ensure >> that the correct plugins are installed (and warn/error of any discrepancies >> or extraneous plugins). Ideally, something similar to a `pom.xml`, or >> node's `package.json`, or python's `requirements.txt`. >> >> I'd be happy with such a tool if it were a standalone executable, or >> another Jenkins plugin, or a feature of some Config Management tool (e.g. >> Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt). >> >> I know that plugins can be installed by copying .hpi/.jpi files to >> ~jenkins/plugins/. This works for backing up, mostly, but is far from >> ideal. Problems I have with this: >> >> * plugin bloat: no record of when/why a plugin was installed or if it >> should be removed; over time a large number of unused plugins acccumulate >> * version drift: no record of when/why a plugin was updated, or why a >> particular version was changed; in most cases you just use the most up to >> date version from when you installed the plugin, and upgrading in the >> future is difficult to track >> * custom plugins: if I've recompiled a .hpi file for a fork of a plugin >> I've made, it's tough to tell the difference between my version and the >> version in the update-center >> >> I'm a big fan of infrastructure-as-code. Particularly, I like being able >> to see a history of infrastructure changes in a source controlled >> repository. Source control of Jenkins plugins would allow >> >> * informative commit messages >> * code review for why plugins are being added >> * easier rollbacks to previous good states when upgrading >> >> Being able to deploy a Jenkins master from configuration would provide a >> bunch of other benefits: >> >> * easier to deploy new Jenkins masters (for testing, disaster recovery, >> complex multi-master configurations) >> * indicate the source of the plugin (i.e. the update-center, a github >> repo, or an internal artifact manager) >> * indicate the correct version to use >> >> Is there any existing tool or framework that would provide all of this? >> Or will I have to roll my own? >> >> Thanks! >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Jenkins Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jenkinsci-users/5a084162-e094-48c5-b3d4-57ca38d269e6%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
