How to Configure GitLab with Jenkins

In this article, we will explore how to configure GitLab with Jenkins for seamless integration and automation of software development processes. We will cover the setup and configuration of both GitLab and Jenkins, as well as the steps to integrate them. Additionally, we will discuss building and testing with Jenkins, continuous integration and deployment, troubleshooting, and best practices. By the end of this article, you will have a clear understanding of how to effectively use GitLab and Jenkins together in your development workflow.

Key Takeaways

• GitLab and Jenkins are powerful tools for software development and automation.
• Setting up GitLab involves installing and configuring the GitLab server and creating repositories.
• Setting up Jenkins requires installing and configuring the Jenkins server and creating jobs.
• Integrating GitLab with Jenkins involves setting up a GitLab webhook and configuring Jenkins to build on GitLab events.
• Jenkins can be used to automate the build and testing processes, and view the results.

What is GitLab and Jenkins?

Understanding GitLab

GitLab is a web-based DevOps lifecycle tool that provides a complete solution for managing and delivering software. It offers a wide range of features and capabilities, including version control, issue tracking, continuous integration and deployment, and more. With GitLab Ultimate, you can standardize and scale your software development process, automate tasks, and build a modern software development team.

GitLab CI/CD is a powerful feature that allows you to automate the entire software development lifecycle, from code commit to production. It enables iterative development, testing, and continuous releasing, while also measuring developer productivity and improving collaboration.

To better understand the status of your CI/CD pipeline, GitLab provides one application and one data store for everyone on the team, including business stakeholders. This unified tool ensures transparency and visibility, making it easier to monitor and manage the software lifecycle.

In addition, GitLab integrates seamlessly with other tools and systems, such as Jenkins, to enhance your development workflows. By leveraging GitLab’s version control and tracking capabilities, you can navigate challenges in Jenkins-GitLab integration and ensure traceability of code changes.

With GitLab, you can accelerate development, reduce costs, and deliver secure code faster. Its pipelines are built for simplicity and scale, allowing you to implement guardrails and ensure safe deployments. GitLab Ultimate empowers you to build a modern software development team and achieve your software development goals.

Understanding Jenkins

Jenkins is an open-source automation server that manages the whole code lifecycle, from development and testing to deployment. When combined with GitHub, an online platform that uses Git for version control and encourages collaborative development through pull requests, branching, and issue tracking, this synergy is amplified. You’ll see how these tools work together to create a solid foundation for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) as we walk through the fundamentals to integrate Jenkins with GitHub. So, the power of Jenkins with GitHub is about to unfurl in a series of steps and insights.

Setting Up GitLab

Installing GitLab

To install GitLab, you have a few options depending on your needs. If you’re using GitLab.com, you can skip this step as it provides shared runners for you. If you prefer a self-hosted solution, you can choose between GitLab Community Edition (CE) or GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE) server. Here are the installation options available:

1. Install on Linux: The Omnibus package includes services and tools to install GitLab without laborious configuration.
2. Install on Kubernetes: If you’re using cluster management, we recommend the Helm chart or the Operator for installing cloud-native GitLab.
3. Install with Docker: GitLab maintains a set of official Docker images based on the Omnibus GitLab package.
4. Compile from source: If the Omnibus GitLab package isn’t available for your distribution, you can install GitLab from source.
5. Install from cloud provider: Install directly from platforms like AWS, Azure, GCP, OpenShift, and DigitalOcean.

Configuring GitLab

To configure GitLab for your CI/CD pipelines, follow these steps:

1. Check if the webhook that connects to GitLab is configured to check for relevant activity and ensure that the user account used for the connection has sufficient permissions.

2. Select the VCS integration in the list and click the Disable button. Then, click the Enable button to reconfigure the webhook if there was a problem with the existing one.

3. Make sure to match the job name in the integration settings with the name of the job in GitLab CI/CD. Alternatively, you can add a new integration job with the same name as the GitLab CI/CD job.

4. Save the settings for the new job.

By following these steps, you can successfully configure GitLab for seamless integration with your CI/CD pipelines.

Creating a GitLab repository

After setting up GitLab, the next step is to create a repository where you can store your code. A repository is like a folder that holds all your project files and allows you to track changes made to them. To create a GitLab repository, follow these steps:

1. Open your browser and navigate to your GitLab instance.
2. Click on the ‘New project’ button to start creating a new repository.
3. Fill in the necessary details such as the name, description, and visibility level of the repository.
4. Choose whether you want to initialize the repository with a README file or not.
5. Click on the ‘Create project’ button to create the repository.

Once the repository is created, you can start adding files, making changes, and tracking the progress of your project.

Setting Up Jenkins

Installing Jenkins

To install Jenkins, you will need to satisfy the following prerequisites:

• Java
• Jenkins Generic Java package (.war)

Once the prerequisites are fulfilled, you can proceed with the installation. There are two options:

1. Locally on your PC: Download the Jenkins Java package and run the installation command in the terminal.

2. Docker container: Set up Jenkins in a Docker container using the provided command.

After the installation, you can access Jenkins by clicking on the ‘Start using Jenkins’ button on the Jenkins Dashboard.

Creating a Jenkins job

To create a Jenkins job, follow these steps:

1. Go to Pipelines | Pipelines and click on New Pipeline.
2. Select ‘Use the classic editor’ to create a pipeline without a YAML.
3. Choose the Myshuttle project and repository, then click Continue.
4. Scroll down and select the standard Jenkins template, and click Apply.
5. Specify ‘windows-2019’ for the Agent specification and provide ‘MyShuttle’ as the Job name.
6. Click on Apply to create the job.

Once the job is created, you can configure the Jenkins endpoint and source mapping. Make sure to select the correct services endpoint and job names. You can also enable options like ‘Capture console output’ and ‘Capture pipeline output’ to capture the output of the Jenkins build console and wait for completion. This will ensure that the build process is completed successfully.

Integrating GitLab with Jenkins

Setting up GitLab webhook

To configure the GitLab webhook for integration with Jenkins, follow these steps:

1. Open your GitLab repository settings.
2. Navigate to the Webhooks section.
3. Click on ‘Add webhook’.
4. In the ‘Payload URL’ field, enter the Jenkins URL followed by ‘/gitlab-webhook/’. For example, if your Jenkins URL is ‘http://jenkins.example.com‘, the payload URL should be ‘http://jenkins.example.com/gitlab-webhook/‘.
5. Set the ‘Content type’ to ‘application/json’.
6. Generate a personal access token in GitLab with the necessary permissions.
7. Enter the token in the ‘Secret Token’ field.
8. Select the events you want to trigger the webhook.

Once you have completed these steps, the GitLab webhook will be configured to send events to Jenkins.

Configuring Jenkins to build on GitLab events

To configure Jenkins to build on GitLab events, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Azure DevOps project settings page and select Service hooks under General.

2. Select + Create subscription.

3. In the New Service Hook Subscriptions screen, select the Jenkins option and click the Next button.

4. Jenkins service supports three events – Build completed, Code Pushed, and Pull request merged. We are only interested in the code push event, so select Code pushed for the Trigger on this type of event field.

5. Select the MyShuttle repository and click Next.

6. Provide the following details in the Select and configure the action to perform screen:

   • Select the Trigger generic build option.
   • Provide the Jenkins base URL in Http://{ip address}:8080 format.
   • Provide the User name and User API Token to trigger the build. Note that the username and Token are the credentials of the Jenkins user. For Token use, the API Token generated earlier from Jenkins.
   • Select the Build job you created in Jenkins.

7. Click the Next button to complete the configuration.

Building and Testing with Jenkins

Setting up build triggers

To set up build triggers in Jenkins, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Jenkins dashboard and select the job you want to configure.
2. Click on ‘Configure’ to open the job configuration page.
3. Scroll down to the ‘Build Triggers’ section.
4. Select the appropriate trigger option based on your requirements. This can be a specific event, such as code push or pull request merged, or a generic build trigger.
5. Provide the necessary details, such as the Jenkins base URL, username, and user API token, to trigger the build.
6. Click ‘Save’ to apply the changes.

By setting up build triggers, you can automate the build process in Jenkins and ensure that builds are triggered based on specific events or conditions.

Running tests with Jenkins

After setting up Jenkins and configuring the necessary plugins, you can now run tests for your Node.js application. Jenkins provides a seamless integration with popular testing frameworks like Mocha and Jest, allowing you to easily execute unit tests and generate test reports.

To run tests with Jenkins, follow these steps:

1. Ensure that the necessary test dependencies are installed by adding a build step to your Jenkins job. Use the npm install command to install the required npm packages.
2. Add a build step to execute the unit tests using the appropriate test runner command, such as npm test for Mocha or npm run test for Jest.
3. After the tests have been executed, Jenkins will generate test reports that provide detailed information about the test results, including the number of passed and failed tests.

By running tests with Jenkins, you can ensure the quality and reliability of your Node.js application, identifying any issues or bugs early in the development process.

Viewing build and test results

To view the build details and the list of build artifacts, select the build number displayed in the Build History section. Select the Test Result option to view the results of the unit tests that were included in the build definition. Next, we will explore the two different options available to trigger the Jenkins CI job when a code is pushed to Azure Repos.

Continuous Integration and Deployment

Automating the CI/CD pipeline

Automated CI/CD workflows expedite software delivery, reducing time-to-market across diverse platforms. Continuous testing and integration ensure higher quality releases, bolstering reliability and user satisfaction. Visibility and Traceability Amplified. Jenkins’ comprehensive monitoring and reporting provide real-time insights into development lifecycles, enhancing visibility. GitLab’s version control facilitates meticulous tracking of code changes and their impact, ensuring

Deploying applications with Jenkins

Once the build is complete, the next step is to deploy the application using Jenkins. Jenkins provides various options for deployment, including deploying as a Docker container. To deploy the application as a Docker container, follow these steps:

1. Build the Docker image for the application.
2. Tag the image with a unique identifier, such as the Jenkins build ID.
3. Stop and remove any existing Docker container.
4. Run a new container from the built image.
5. Map the host port 80 to the container port 3000.
6. Access the application using the machine’s public IP address and port 80.

By following these steps, you can easily deploy your application with Jenkins and ensure it is accessible for external use.

Monitoring and managing the CI/CD process

Continuous testing and integration ensure higher quality releases, bolstering reliability and user satisfaction. Visibility and Traceability Amplified. Jenkins’ comprehensive monitoring and reporting provide real-time insights into development lifecycles, enhancing visibility. GitLab’s version control facilitates meticulous tracking of code changes and their impact, ensuring

Troubleshooting and Best Practices

Common issues and solutions

Integrating legacy mainframe systems into modern CI/CD workflows demands expertise and tailored plugins for seamless integration. Implementing robust security measures and access controls across diverse systems requires meticulous planning and execution. Efficient tool adoption necessitates comprehensive training and documentation to empower teams in leveraging the full potential of Jenkins and GitLab. Accelerate zDevOps for software release automation.

Best practices for GitLab and Jenkins integration

When integrating GitLab and Jenkins, there are several best practices to keep in mind. First, it is important to implement robust security measures and access controls across diverse systems. This ensures that your code and infrastructure are protected from unauthorized access. Additionally, comprehensive training and documentation should be provided to empower teams in leveraging the full potential of Jenkins and GitLab. This includes educating team members on the tools and processes involved in CI/CD workflows.

To further enhance collaboration and efficiency, it is recommended to use unified version control through GitLab. This allows for cross-platform collaboration, bridging mainframe and open system teams. Jenkins’ automation capabilities can also be utilized to streamline CI/CD pipelines, reducing silos and fostering agile, collaborative development environments.

In terms of monitoring and reporting, Jenkins provides comprehensive real-time insights into development lifecycles, enhancing visibility. GitLab’s version control facilitates meticulous tracking of code changes and their impact, ensuring traceability. By implementing continuous testing and integration, you can ensure higher quality releases, bolstering reliability and user satisfaction.

In summary, when integrating GitLab and Jenkins, it is important to prioritize security, provide comprehensive training, utilize unified version control, streamline CI/CD pipelines, and implement continuous testing and integration for enhanced visibility and traceability.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, the article provided a comprehensive guide on how to configure GitLab with Jenkins. It covered the basics of GitLab and Jenkins, as well as the step-by-step process of setting up and configuring both tools. The article also highlighted the importance of integrating GitLab with Jenkins and discussed best practices for seamless integration. Additionally, it delved into building and testing with Jenkins, continuous integration and deployment, troubleshooting common issues, and implementing best practices. By following the instructions outlined in the article, readers can successfully configure GitLab with Jenkins and optimize their software development processes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is GitLab?

GitLab is a web-based DevOps lifecycle tool that provides a complete solution for managing source code, CI/CD pipelines, and project collaboration.

What is Jenkins?

Jenkins is an open-source automation server that helps automate the building, testing, and deployment of software projects.

How do I install GitLab?

To install GitLab, you can follow the official installation guide provided by GitLab. It provides step-by-step instructions for different operating systems.

How do I configure GitLab?

After installing GitLab, you can configure it by accessing the GitLab web interface and going to the admin area. From there, you can customize various settings and options.

How do I create a GitLab repository?

To create a GitLab repository, you can navigate to your GitLab project and click on the ‘New project’ button. From there, you can specify the repository details and create the repository.

How do I install Jenkins?

To install Jenkins, you can follow the official installation guide provided by Jenkins. It provides step-by-step instructions for different operating systems.

How do I configure Jenkins?

After installing Jenkins, you can access the Jenkins web interface and go through the initial setup process. This includes setting up an admin user, installing plugins, and configuring global settings.

How do I create a Jenkins job?

To create a Jenkins job, you can navigate to the Jenkins web interface and click on the ‘New Item’ link. From there, you can specify the job details, such as the source code repository, build steps, and post-build actions.