Pod Templates

We implement CI/CD pipelines using declarative Jenkins pipelines using a Jenkinsfile in the source of each application or environment git repository.

We use the kubernetes plugin for Jenkins to be able to spin up new pods on kubernetes for each build - giving us an elastic pool of agents to run pipelines thanks to kubernetes.

The Kubernetes plugin uses pod templates to define the pod used to run a CI/CD pipeline which consists of:

• one or more build containers for running commands inside (e.g. your build tools like mvn or npm along with tools we use for other parts of the pipeline like git, jx, helm, kubectl etc)
• volumes for persistence
• environment variables
• secrets so the pipeline can write to git repositories, docker registries, maven/npm/helm repositories and so forth

Referring to Pod Templates

Jenkins X comes with a default set of pod templates for supported languages and runtimes in our build packs and are named something like: jenkins-$PACKNAME.

For example the maven build pack uses the pod template jenkins-maven.

We can then refer to the pod template name in the Jenkinsfile using the agent { label "jenkins-$PACKNAME" } syntax in the declarative pipeline. e.g.

// my declarative Jenkinsfile

pipeline {
    agent {
      label "jenkins-maven"
    }
    environment {
      ...
    }
    stages {
      stage('CI Build and push snapshot') {
        steps {
          container('maven') {
            sh "mvn deploy"
          }
          ...

Submitting new Pod Templates

If you are working on a new build pack then we’d love you to submit a new pod template and we can include it in the Jenkins X distribution!

There now follows instructions on how to do this - please if anything is not clear come join the community and just ask we are happy to help!

To submit a new build pack:

• fork the jenkins-x-platform repository
• add your build pack to the values.yaml file in the jenkins-x-platform repository in the jenkins.Agent.PodTemplates section of the YAML
• you may want to start by copy/pasting the most similar existing pod template (e.g. copy Maven if you are working on a Java based build pod) and just configuring the name, label and Image etc.
• now submit a Pull Request on the jenkins-x-platform repository for your pod template

Build containers

When using pod templates and Jenkins pipelines you could use lots of different containers for each tool. e.g. one container for maven and another for git etc.

We’ve found its much simpler to just have a single builder container with all the common tools inside. This also means you can use kubectl exec or jx rsh to open a shell inside the build pod and have all the tools you need available for use when debugging/diagnosing problem pipelines.

So we have a builder-base docker image which contains all the different tools we tend to use in CI/CD pipelines like jx, skaffold, helm, git, updatebot.

If you want to use a single builder image for your new pod template then you could use builder base as the base and then add your custom tools on top.

e.g. builder-maven uses a Dockerfile to reference the builder base.

So the simplest thing could be to copy a similar builder - like builder-maven and then edit the Dockerfile to add whatever build tools you need.

We love Pull Requests and contributions so please submit Pull Requests for new build containers and Pod Templates and we’re more than happy to help!

Adding your own Pod Templates

To keep things DRY and simple we tend to define pod templates in the Jenkins configuration then refer to the by name in the Jenkinsfile.

There are attempts to make it easy to inline pod template definitions inside your Jenkinsfile if you need it; though a pod template tends to have lots of developer environment specific stuff inside it, like secrets, so we’d prefer to keep most of the pod templates inside the source code of your development environment rather than copy/pasting them into each app.

Today the easiest way to add new Pod Templates is via the Jenkins console. e.g.

jx console

That will open the Jenkins console. Then navigate to Manage Jenkins (on the left hand menu) then Configure System.

You will now be faced with a large page of configuration options ;) The pod templates are usually towards the bottom; you should see all the current pod templates for things like maven, NodeJS etc.

You can edit/add/remove pod templates in that page and hit Save.

Note though that longer term we are hoping to maintain your development environment via GitOps like we do for Staging & Production - which means changes made via the Jenkins UI will be lost when upgrading your development environment.

So longer term we’re hoping to add the Pod Templates into your values.yaml file in your developer environment git repository like we do for the jenkins-x-platform chart.

If you are creating pod templates using open source build tools then it may be simpler for you to just submit your pod template in a Pull Request and we can bake that pod template into future releases of Jenkins X?

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