Build an automated deployment pipeline for your Java EE applications using leading open-source technologies, including NetBeans, Git, Maven, JUnit, Jenkins, and GlassFish. All source code for this post is available on GitHub.

Introduction

In part 1, Building a Deployment Pipeline Using Git, Maven, Jenkins, and GlassFish (Part 1 of 2), we built the first part of our basic deployment pipeline using leading open-source technologies. In part 2, we will use Jenkins CI Server and Oracle GlassFish Application Server to complete our deployment pipeline.

To review, the three main goals of our deployment pipeline are continuous integration, automated testing, and continuous deployment. Our objective is to automatically compile, test, assemble, and deploy our Java EE application to multiple environments, as the project progresses through the software development life cycle (SDLC).

Setting up Git Server

As I mentioned in part 1, as a part of a development team using Git, you would place your project on a remote Git Server. You and your team members would each clone the repository from the Git Server to your local development environments. You and your team would commit your code changes locally, then pull, merge, and push your changes back to the remote Git Server. Jenkins will pull the project’s source code from the Git Server.

In part 1 of this post, we just created a local Git repository. In part 2, we will properly set-up our project on a remote Git Server. First, we need to export our local repository into a new, bare repository on the Git Server. The Git term, ‘bare repository’, refers to a repository that does not contain a working directory. The repository has no working copies of your source files. You only use the bare repository to clone, pull from, and push to. The bare repository contains a .git extension (i.e. ssh://user@server:/git-repos/myproject.git).

From the root of your remote Git Server repository, execute the following command, substituting the path to your local project. If your Git Server is on a separate machine that your local project repository, you will need to copy the new bare repository to the remote Git Server. This involves a few simple steps, explained in this post, and at git-scm.com.

Export Local Project to New Bare Repository

Once you have created the repository on the remote Git Server, I would recommend you clone the remote repository to your local machine and discard your original local repository from part 1 of the post. You don’t have to do this step, but cloning fresh from the server will make sure Git is working correctly. The screen grabs below illustrate an example of cloning a new repository to my local NetBeans Project folder.

Clone New Bare Server Repository – Screen 1

Clone New Bare Server Repository – Screen 2

Clone New Bare Server Repository – Screen 3

Configuring Jenkins

The diagram below illustrates the deployment pipeline from Git Server to Jenkins to GlassFish in finer detail. It begins with an initial commit to the local Git project repository and ends with the deployment of the project’s WAR file to the GlassFish domain. We will walk through it step-by-step.

Jenkins Plugins

Before we create our new Jenkins Jobs, we need to configure Jenkins properly. You will need a recent version of Jenkins installed, along with the following plugins:

1. Build With Parameters Plugin
2. Copy Artifact Plugin
3. Jenkins GIT plugin (includes Jenkins GIT client plugin)
4. Jenkins Parameterized Trigger plugin
5. Maven Integration plugin
6. Credentials Plugin (optional for use with Git Server if security is enabled)
7. ThinBackup (optional to install supplied Jenkins jobs configuration files)

Global Security

Jenkins can be configured with or without Global Security. For this post, I have enabled Global Security, as it typical of most development environments. I chose to use ‘Jenkins’s own user database’ option for authentication. In larger development environments, authentication would normally be done against LDAP.

Configuring Global Security

The user I have set up, ‘jenkins’, will be the user that Git authenticates with when connecting to Jenkins (explained later). Set up your own user and note their API Token. Since Global Security has been enabled, we will need the token later to trigger the Jenkins build from Git. Your user’s unique api token will be different than in the example below.

Jenkins User API Token

Jenkins Jobs

We will set up two Jenkins ‘free-style software project’ jobs, ‘GitMavenGlassFish_Build’ and ‘GitMavenGlassFish_Deploy’. We won’t be using the obvious choice, a ‘maven2/3 project’. If you’re interested, here’s why. The first job, the build job, will be responsible for pulling the source code from the Git Server. The build job, with help from Maven, will compile, test, and assemble the application code. The second job, the deployment job, will pull the artifacts from the build job and deploy them to GlassFish. The build job will trigger the deployment job, once the build job completes successfully. This is explained in detail, to follow.

Why Two Jobs?

Following good modular design and Separation of Concerns (SoC) principles, separating the build from the deployment gains us several advantages, including:

1. Modularity– Ability to change deployment methodology or deployment targets, without disrupting the build and test process. For example, we might move the application hosting from GlassFish to WebLogic, or decide to use Ant instead of Maven for deployment tasks. This can happen totally independent of the build and testing processes.
2. Separation/Isolation – For any reason we are unable to deploy the artifacts as part of the deployment job, we won’t impact the continuous integration and automated testing processes, which are part of the separate build job.
3. Support – Support is easier by having smaller pieces of functionality to troubleshoot and maintain.

In a larger enterprise environment, you would probably encounter further separation of concerns. Unit testing, performance testing, deployment validation, and documentation generation (javadocs) are often handled by separate jobs. Jenkins represents a smaller pipeline within our larger deployment pipeline.

I intentionally left out notification for brevity. At minimum, you would want to be notified when the build or deployment jobs failed. Additionally, with continuous deployment, the deployment would trigger a notification to the stakeholders of that environment, such as the Testers. This lets them know the new software is ready to be tested. Notifications often include a list of bug fixes and feature enhancements that need to be tested. This can easily be pulled from Git into Jenkins and out to the end user.

Both Jenkins jobs definitions are available as xml files on gist.github.com. Using Jenkins’ ThinBackup Plugin, you can save both gists locally, and then restore them to your Jenkins server. The build job gist is here and the deployment job gist is here. This may save you some configuration time.

Jenkins Build Job

Both the build job and the deployment jobs require an input parameter. This property represents the targeted environment (GlassFish domain) for deployment, such as ‘testing’.. How this parameter is passed to Jenkins is discussed later in the Git Hooks section, below.

Reviewing the below screen grab of the build job’s configuration, you will observe the following steps:

1. Build Request – A build request is received by the job (explained later). The request contains an input parameter indicating the ‘environment’. The parameter must be one of the choices listed in ‘Choices’.
2. Maven Dependencies – Based on the pom file, Maven retrieves all the required dependencies from the remote Maven repository, if the dependencies are not already contained in the workspace’s local repository. Note the setting ‘User private Maven repository. This creates a local repository for project dependencies within the project’s workspace.
3. Pull from Git – Jenkins pulls the code from the Git Server using the supplied repository configuration information. Note my Git Server does not require authentication. If it did, we would set-up and use the proper credentials.
4. Build – Jenkins builds the project using the Maven command ‘clean install -e’. The pom file contains the necessary configuration information.
5. Unit Test – The above Maven ‘install’ command also calls JUnit to execute the unit tests. The results of these tests are published and displayed as part of the build job’s details.
6. Assemble WAR – The above Maven ‘install’ command also assembles the project’s WAR file.
7. Archive Artifacts – Based on the success of the build and unit tests, Jenkins archives specific artifacts needed by the deployment job. Jenkins uses the input parameter in #1 to define which properties file and password file to archive.
8. Trigger Deployment Job – Based on the success of the build and unit tests, Jenkins triggers the ‘downstream’ deployment job, passing it the same environment parameter.

Jenkins Build Job Configuration

Jenkins Deployment Job

Reviewing the below screen grab of the deployment job’s configuration, you will observe the following steps:

1. Build Request – A build request is received from the upstream build job. The request contains the input parameter indicating ‘environment’.
2. Copy Artifacts – Jenkins copies the artifacts from the build job that called the deploy job.
3. Read Properties – Maven executes the command ‘mvn properties:read-project-properties glassfish:redeploy -e’. The first half of this command instructs Maven to read the appropriate properties file, as indicated by the environment parameter, ‘glassfish.properties.file.argument=${environment}’.
4. POM – Maven substitutes the key ‘glassfish.properties.file.argument’ in the pom file with the environment value. This tells Maven the name of the properties file, which supplies all the remaining property values to the pom file.
5. Maven Dependencies – If the dependencies are not already contained in the workspace’s local repository, Maven retrieves all the required dependencies from the remote Maven repositories, based on the pom. Note the setting ‘User private Maven repository’ checked in the screen grab below. This option instructs Jenkins to creates a local repository for project dependencies within the project’s workspace.
6. Deployment – The last half of the command in #3 deploys, or more accurately redeploys the application’s WAR file to GlassFish. The ‘glassfish:redeploy’ works only if the WAR file has already been initially deployed to the GlassFish domain using the ‘glassfish:deploy’ command. For this process, I am assuming the initial deployment was already done directly through the GlassFish Administration Console, NetBeans, or command line.

Jenkins Deploy Job Configuration

Git Hooks

To achieve continuous integration, we want to automatically build and test our job after each change to our code. We have a number of choices to make this happen. The obvious choice is letting Jenkins poll the Git Server. Although polling would simplify configuration, polling is frowned upon in many environments. Even the creator of Jenkins, Kohsuke Kawaguchi, frowns upon polling in his post, ‘Polling Must Die‘.

Why is polling bad? It adds unnecessary activity and delay. Let’s say Jenkins’ polling frequency is set to every 2 minutes, but you only have an average of 5 pushes to your remote Git Server project repository per day. Based on these stats, in just one day, Jenkins will poll Git 720 times to discover only 5 pushes. That’s 144 times per push. Also, based on the polling frequency, when you do push, you could wait up to 2 minutes for Jenkins to queue the build job. The longer you wait for feedback on your changes, the greater chance your defects could be pulled down by other developers. You should expect immediate and continuous feedback.

A vastly more efficient and configurable method of continuous integration between Git and Jenkins is Git Hooks. Git Hooks allow us to execute scripts based on specific Git actions. In our case, when a developer completes a successful push to the remote Git Server project repository, we want to call Jenkins to build, test, and deploy the modified project code. Using hooks means we only call Jenkins when a successful push is completed. Furthermore, we can be assured Jenkins will immediately queue our request to build and deploy the job when a push occurs.

Post-Receive Hook

There are several types of Git Hooks. They include ‘post-commit’, ‘pre-push’, ‘update’, ‘pre-rebase, and so forth. I recommend this post on kernel.org for a good explanation of the hook types and thier purposes. Git also includes sample hook files inside the ‘hooks’ subdirectory of each new repository .git folder.

For our pipeline, we will employ the ‘post-receive’ hook. Whenever a successful push is received by Git Server’s project repository, the ‘post-receive’ hook will be called. The script commands, contained in the post-receive hook file, will be executed. Hooks can language agnostic; they can be almost any scripting language, such as Perl, Shell, Bash, or Ruby.

To create the hook, create a new file, ‘post-receive’, in the hooks sub-directory of the Git Server’s project repository. Add the below code to the file. Change the command to match your local file path. Also, change the API Token to match your user’s token from Jenkins. Note the command requires cURL to be installed on the Git Server. If installing cURL is not an option, there are other options available to execute the http post call from the hook’s script.

NetBeans and Git Hooks

Now some slightly bad news. As with any integration, there is always trade-offs; that is the case with NetBeans and Git. Although NetBeans works well with Git, there are a few features that have not been implemented. Unfortunately, this lack of complete integration effects NetBeans’ ability to make use of Git Hooks. Only after three hours of troubleshooting and research on the Internet, did I realize this limitation. The hooks fire fine if a git push command is executed from a command prompt or from within a Git application like Git Gui or Git Bash. However, from NetBeans, the Team -> Remote -> Push… does not cause the hooks to be called.

Post-Receive Hook Working from a Windows Command Prompt

Git Hooks do not work with NetBeans because NetBeans does not use a command line client for Git. NetBeans uses a pure java implementation of the Git client, Java GIT, known as JGit. I understand that other IDE’s also share this limitation. There are several discussions on StackOverflow and on the NetBeans bug tracking site about the issue and workarounds.

So what does this mean? You can use NetBeans to perform all of your local tasks. However, when it comes time to push your code back to the remote Git Server repository, you must use a command prompt, Bash shell, or a command line based tool. I recommend Git Gui. Git ships with built-in GUI tools, including git-gui and gitk. It can be downloaded from git-scm.com.

Git Gui Graphical User Interface for Git

Push Files Using Git GUI Instead of NetBeans

Pushing changes to the remote Git Server using Git Gui instead of NetBeans may seem inconvenient at first. However, the more advanced your needs become with Git, the more you will find you need the additional functionality of Git Bash, Git Gui, and gitk. Tasks like resetting the branch to a previous revision, compressing the Git repository database, and visualizing repository history, can all be done with tools like Git Gui and gitk. I have Git Gui running when I am working in NetBeans or other IDEs; it becomes second nature.

Using Git Gui and gitk to Examine and Modify the Project Repository

Deploying to GlassFish

At this point we have configured the Git Server, created the Jenkins build and deploy jobs, and configured our Git hook. We are ready to test our deployment pipeline. First, make sure your GlassFish domains are running. Also, recall we are assuming that an initial deployment of the application has occurred. This might be directly through the GlassFish Administration Console, through NetBeans, or via the command line. Recall, Jenkins will be only be executing a re-deploy.

Check and Start GlassFish Domains

To test the system, make an innocuous change to the Project. Commit the change to your local Git repository. Following that, push the change back to the remote Git Server repository using Git Gui. If the hook fired, you will see output to the Git Gui terminal window, echoed from the post-receive hook as it executed its script.

Push with Git Gui Triggering Jenkins Build

The post-receive hook executes the cURL command, which posts an HTTP request to Jenkins via the Jenkins Remote API. You should observe is the Jenkins build job queued and running.

Jenkins Build Job Running

When the build completes, review the Parameters menu option in the left navigation menu. It shows that the environment parameter was passed from the post-receive hook to the build job. The build results window also provides test results, Git Build Data, and the changes pushed to Git that triggered the CI build.

Jenkins Build Job Results

The console output from the build provides a detailed view of the build process. Using the ‘-e’ for echo with the Maven command, increases the level of output detail. You see the details of Maven copying the required dependencies from the remote repository to the local workspace repository, prior to compilation. You see the unit tests being executed. Finally, you see the WAR file assembled and the required artifacts archived.

Regarding Maven Dependencies, you will only see the dependencies copied on the first build to an empty workspace. Maven does not re-pull dependencies if they already exist in the workspace’s local repository. To see the difference, empty your workspace and build the job, then immediately rebuild the job. Compare the console outputs of both jobs. You will see a significant difference in the Maven dependency activities.

Jenkins Build Job Console Results

Once the build job has completed successfully, you should notice the Jenkins deployment job running, triggered by the build job. When complete, note the detail that lists the exact build job that called the deployment job, and its build number. For example, the upstream build job #45 triggered the downstream deployment job #33. This linkage between upstream and downstream jobs is retained in the job’s history.

As before, review the Parameters menu option in the left navigation menu. It shows that the environment parameter was passed from the post-receive hook to the build job, and then on to the deployment job.

Jenkins Deployment Job Complete

A review of the console output will confirm that the artifacts were copied from the build job and the WAR file was deployed to the ‘testing’ GlassFish domain.

Jenkins Deployment Job Console Output

GlassFish

If the hook fired, and both the Jenkins build and deployment jobs ran successfully, you should observe that the project’s WAR files, containing your recent change, was deployed to the testing GlassFish domain.

Application Installed on GlassFish Server Testing Domain

You can verify this by calling the application’s RESTful ‘resources/helloWorld’ URI, from your browser. Repeat the process by changing the output string, commit the change, and push. See if you see your change deployed.

Application Running on GlassFish Server Testing Domain

Jenkins Workflows

Using our deployment pipeline, we have two distinct workflow options:

1. Continuous– Use Git hooks to build, test, and deploy the WAR file to the domain(s) of choice when changes are pushed. Any time a change is pushed, a build, test, and deploy, should occur. This would be just for development at first. Once the project enters the testing phase of the SDLC, then it would include deployments to testing.
2. Semi-Automated – Start the Jenkins build manually in the Jenkins browser-based Administration Console. This is more typical for a release to Production. Most teams are not comfortable extending the continuous deployment functionality into Production. Often, a deployment team will deploy the project artifacts in a controlled and staged approach. The Jenkins build and/or deployment jobs both allow this feature, along with the ability to provide the environment parameter both jobs needs.

Conclusion

In part 1, we learned how to create a simple Java EE web application project in NetBeans using Maven. We learned how to integrate JUnit for unit testing, and how use Git to manage our source code.

In part 2, we learned how to configure a remote Git Server, how to configure Jenkins CI Server to clone our project from the Git Server, build, test, and assemble it. If the build was successful, we learned how to configure Jenkins to deploy our project to a specific GlassFish domain, based on the project’s stage in the SDLC. We achieved our goals of continuous integration, automated testing, and continuous deployment.

Going Forward

To extend and enhance our deployment pipeline, you might consider adding the following features: 1) further separate the Jenkins jobs by function, 2) add build and deploy notifications, 3) add the ability to deploy to multiple environments simultaneously (i.e. development and testing), 4) add additional testing to confirm the deployment to GlassFish, 5) configure a versioning and naming scheme for the deployed artifacts, and 6) add error handling if a parameter is not received or is not one of the expected values.