Quick Start Guide

This guide was made with the impatient in mind so explanation is sparse. It will guide users through a set of typical use cases for JJB using the same job definitions we use to test JJB.

  1. Clone the repository to get the JJB job definition examples
  2. The Installation can be either from pypi (released version) or from the clone (master).

Usage of the commands below assumes that you are at the root of the cloned directory.

Use Case 1: Test a job definition

JJB creates Jenkins XML configuration file from a YAML/JSON definition file and just uploads it to Jenkins. JJB provides a convenient test command to allow you to validate the XML before you attempt to upload it to Jenkins.

Test a YAML job definition:

jenkins-jobs test tests/yamlparser/fixtures/templates002.yaml

The above command prints the generated Jenkins XML to the console. If you prefer to send it to a directory:

jenkins-jobs test -o output tests/yamlparser/fixtures/templates002.yaml

The output directory will contain files with the XML configurations.

Use Case 2: Updating Jenkins Jobs

Once you’ve tested your job definition and are happy with it then you can use the update command to deploy the job to Jenkins. The update command requires a configuration file. An example file is supplied in the etc folder, you should update it to match your Jenkins master:

jenkins-jobs --conf etc/jenkins_jobs.ini-sample update tests/yamlparser/fixtures/templates002.yaml

The above command will update your Jenkins master with the generated jobs.

Caution: JJB caches Jenkins job information locally. Changes made using the Jenkins UI will not update that cache, which may lead to confusion. See Updating Jobs for more information.

Use Case 3: Working with JSON job definitions

You can also define your jobs in json instead of yaml:

jenkins-jobs --conf etc/jenkins_jobs.ini-sample update tests/jsonparser/fixtures/simple.json

The above command just uses a simple job definition. You can also convert any of the YAML examples to JSON and feed that to JJB.

Use Case 4: Deleting a job

To delete a job:

jenkins-jobs --conf etc/jenkins_jobs.ini-sample delete simple

The above command deletes the job simple from the Jenkins master.

Please refer to the jenkins-jobs Command Reference and the Job Definitions pages for more details.