Online documentation for Multibranch Pipeline Guide
MulitBranch Pipeline support allows Jenkins to automatically find branches or change reviews in Perforce and create Jenkins Pipeline Jobs to build them.
Perforce has many ways to represent a Project or collection of related branches; in order to best support the
different uses the p4-plugin uses four implementations of SCMSource:
- Helix Branches
- Helix Streams
- Helix Swarm
- Helix4Git
To create a MulitBranch Pipeline choose New Item from the main menu, provide a name and select Multibranch Pipeline from the list.
In the configuration you will need to add one of the Helix SCMSource implementations; under the Branch Source group
select the appropriate implementation from the drop-down Add source menu.
Each SCMSource implementation will require a Credential, a set of Perforce paths specific to the implantation, an
optional filter and Advance options (Populate and Repository Browsing behaviour).
Example configuration for each of the MultiBranch SCMSource Implementations supported by the p4-plugin.
A simple example configuration for Helix Streams:
Jenkins will now probe each child stream associated with the Include streams path //streams/...
(effectively all the streams returned by the command p4 streams //streams/...), if the probe finds a Jenkinsfile
in the stream then it creates a Pipeline Job and schedules a build.
You can provide a list of stream depots in the Include streams (separated by a new line) to include other streams in the search.
The MultiBranch configuration for Swarm requires the Credential and the Swarm project name multiswarmtest for this
example:
The p4-plugin will use the Swarm API to query what branches are used in the Swarm Project and then probe for the
Jenkinsfile to create the Pipeline build.
In addition to finding the branches in a Swarm project the p4-plugin will query Swarm for pre and post commit reviews. The p4-plugin will create Pipeline Job for each open review and gather the pipelines in a Reviews tab separate to the default Branches tab.
The Helix4Git configures one or more Git repositories backed by a Helix Graph depot. Provide the Credentials and a list of one or more Graph (Git) Repository.
For example; include a graph depot called //plugins with a Git Repository called p4-plugin. Note that the advanced
option has been expanded to show that Graph based syncs have a limited set of Populate options, where
Graph force clean and sync is the recommended default:
The p4-plugin will than scan all Git Branches and open Pull Requests,
building Pipeline Jobs as required. Due to the multi-multi relationship with repositories and branches the Job naming
convention is {depot}.{repo}.{branch} for branches and {depot}.{repo}.{branch}.{ref} for pull requests.
Helix branches is more complex to define as there is no 'project' definition to group the set of Perforce depot paths together.
In addition to the Credentials Users will need to specify the parent path for the branches in the Include branches text box. The Include filter can be used to filter the list of candidate branches found by the initial search.
For example, a depot my contain the following branches, but you only want to build the com* branches:
//depot/projA/comX
//depot/projA/comX
//depot/projA/comX
//depot/projA/resA
//depot/projA/resB
If the Jenkinsfile is found in each branch you will get the following Multi Pipeline branches:
Extra options and customisations.
If your Jenksinfile is located in a subdirectory or uses a different name, Jenkins provide a Build Configuration
option to allow customisation.
Lightweight checkout is automatically applied by Jenkins to MultiBranch jobs; you may wish to disable the default checkout of your code
and add your own checkout step in the Jenkinsfile. Simply add options { skipDefaultCheckout() } to the agent.
For example:
pipeline {
agent any
options { skipDefaultCheckout() }
stages {
stage('Checkout') {
steps {
p4sync credential: 'id', populate: forceClean(), source: streamSource('//stream/main')
}
}
stage('Build') {
steps {
echo 'Building...'
}
}
stage('Test') {
steps {
echo 'Testing...'
}
}
stage('Deploy') {
steps {
echo 'Deploying...'
}
}
}
}Perforce can trigger Jenkins to build MultiBranch projects based on an event, such as a submitted change.
A triggered build also requires an administrator to add a Perforce trigger to the Perforce server. For information about adding a trigger, see Using triggers to customize behavior in Helix Core Server Administrator Guide: Fundamentals.
The trigger needs to POST a JSON payload to the Jenkins end-point JENKINS_URL/p4/event/.
{
"p4port": P4PORT, Perforce P4PORT (must match the Jenkins Credential)
"change": 10001, Change number to sync files for build
"event_type": "UPDATED" Event type (currently only UPDATED is supported)
}
{
"p4port": P4PORT, Perforce P4PORT (must match the Jenkins Credential)
"project": PROJECT, Swarm Project name
"branch": BRANCH, Swarm Branch name
"path": PATH, Swarm Path name
"change": 10001, Change number to sync files for build
"status": "committed", Change status is "committed"
"event_type": "UPDATED" Event type (currently only UPDATED is supported)
}
{
"p4port": P4PORT, Perforce P4PORT (must match the Jenkins Credential)
"project": PROJECT, Swarm Project name
"branch": BRANCH, Swarm Branch name
"path": PATH, Swarm Path name
"change": 10001, Change number to sync files for build
"review": 10022, Review number to unshelve for build
"status": "shelved", Change status is "shelved"
"event_type": "UPDATED" Event type (currently only UPDATED is supported)
}