Pipelines and Releases

Now that you’ve spent all the time getting your release just right, you aren’t going to want to create it from scratch again the next time you need a release.

You started your release from an existing self-service catalog item. In this lab, you’re going to look at another way of building the steps in the release. For this lab we are going to build a pipeline. Pipelines are kind of like releases in that they will allow us to orchestrate several steps over many stages. We can even have entry and exit gates to the different stages. Pipelines however do not keep track of planned start and end dates or support the deployer task. Once we define a pipeline we can use it as the basis for our new releases.

Normally, you could define a pipeline similar to the way we built the stages in our release. For this lab and to save you the trouble of building the pipeline over by providing the DSL code here for you to use.

Building the Pipeline from DSL

The DSL code to create our release as a pipeline is as follows:

def CurrentUser = getProperty("/myUser/userName").value
pipeline 'pipeline_Base', {
  projectName = CurrentUser

  formalParameter 'ec_stagesToRun', {
    expansionDeferred = '1'
  }

  stage 'Release Readiness', {
    colorCode = '#289ce1'
    pipelineName = 'pipeline_Base'
    gate 'PRE', {
      }

    gate 'POST', {
      task 'No Code Smells', {
        gateCondition = '$[/javascript myStageRuntime.tasks[\'Get latest SonarQube scan results\'].job.getLastSonarMetrics.code_smells != null || myStageRuntime.tasks[\'Get latest SonarQube scan results\'].job.getLastSonarMetrics.code_smells < 1]'
        gateType = 'POST'
        subproject = CurrentUser
        taskType = 'CONDITIONAL'
      }
    }

    task 'Git changelog', {
      actualParameter = [
        'branch': 'main',
        'commit': '',
        'config': '/projects/Workshop/pluginConfigurations/cb-bot',
        'depth': '',
        'gitRepoFolder': '/tmp/demo-app',
        'mirror': 'false',
        'overwrite': 'true',
        'pathspecs': '',
        'referenceFolder': '',
        'repoUrl': 'https://github.com/cloudbees-days/cdro-workshop-demo-app',
        'resultPropertySheet': '/myJob/clone',
        'shallowSubmodules': 'false',
        'submodules': 'false',
        'tag': '',
      ]
      stageSummaryParameters = '[{"name":"cloneData","label":"cloneData"}]'
      subpluginKey = 'EC-Git'
      subprocedure = 'Clone'
      taskType = 'PLUGIN'
    }

    task 'Get latest SonarQube scan results', {
      actualParameter = [
        'config': '/projects/Workshop/pluginConfigurations/cb-demos-sonar',
        'resultFormat': 'propertysheet',
        'resultSonarProperty': '/myJob/getLastSonarMetrics',
        'sonarMetricsComplexity': 'all',
        'sonarMetricsDocumentation': 'all',
        'sonarMetricsDuplications': 'all',
        'sonarMetricsIssues': 'all',
        'sonarMetricsMaintainability': 'all',
        'sonarMetricsMetrics': 'all',
        'sonarMetricsQualityGates': 'all',
        'sonarMetricsReliability': 'all',
        'sonarMetricsSecurity': 'all',
        'sonarMetricsTests': 'all',
        'sonarProjectKey': 'petclinic',
        'sonarProjectName': 'petclinic',
        'sonarProjectVersion': '2.2.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT',
        'sonarTaskId': '',
        'sonarTimeout': '',
      ]
      subpluginKey = 'EC-SonarQube'
      subprocedure = 'Get Last SonarQube Metrics'
      taskType = 'PLUGIN'
    }
  }

  stage 'Quality Assurance', {
    colorCode = '#ff7f0e'
    pipelineName = 'pipeline_Base'
    gate 'PRE', {
      }

    gate 'POST', {
      }

    task 'Deploy to QA', {
      deployerRunType = 'serial'
      subproject = CurrentUser
      taskType = 'DEPLOYER'
    }
  }

  stage 'Production', {
    colorCode = '#2ca02c'
    pipelineName = 'pipeline_Base'
    gate 'PRE', {
      task 'Manual approval', {
        gateType = 'PRE'
        notificationEnabled = '1'
        notificationTemplate = 'ec_default_gate_task_notification_template'
        subproject = CurrentUser
        taskType = 'APPROVAL'
        approver = [
          CurrentUser,
        ]
      }
    }

    gate 'POST', {
      }

    task 'Deploy to Production', {
      deployerRunType = 'serial'
      subproject = CurrentUser
      taskType = 'DEPLOYER'
    }
  }
}

If you were to go to the DSL IDE by going to the “burger menu” and going to DevOps Essential > DSL IDE you can paste this code and run it. This should run just fine.

The operations here are idempotent, meaning you can run them over and over without issue. It will make sure that the described state is the state in the system.

In this case, we’ve used DSL and created a new pipeline. We can see this pipeline by going to the “burger menu” and going to Release Orchestration > Pipelines.

Now I can use this pipeline to create releases. Since the deployer tasks are generic I can release any application with this pipeline. I will need to define the applications, environments and processes for each release though. Let’s try that now then we will see how we cand automate even that.

Starting a Release from a Pipeline

To start our release based on our new pipeline lets go to the “burger menu” and going to Release Orchestration > Releases and creating a new release, by clicking on the New + button.

The New Release dialog screen will popup. We are going to be selecting Create new…

Next you will be prompted to provide some more information about the release as follows:

Fill in this form for your release and click Next.

We are going to create our release from the pipeline we just created from DSL. You can use the drop down at the top left to filter down to your project (my-username) and select your pipeline_Base

Click OK then OK and we have a new release.

We could start this release, but we haven’t defined what applications will be deployed, which environments they will be deployed to and what process to use to deploy them. Let’s do that now.

Defining what we want to deploy

To define what we are deploying in the Deployer tasks in this release we will fist need to define what applications this release will be deploying. To do that we will first click on the Applications button.

Now we have our application associated with the release

Now lets define the environments and processes by clicking on Envs & Configs button.

Select a stage then add an environment

Select a stage then add a process

Repeate the process for the next stage.

OK, now we are ready to run our new release. Click on the Run button

Up Next

That was a lot of work to start a release. We did make things more repeatable and maintainable, but moving most of our logic to the pipeline. We still had a lot of work to do once we started the release. Let’s make that simpler next by creating a Service Catalog