Building a continuous-integration Android build server on FreeBSD: Part three: configuring Jenkins for on-demand builds


November 2016.
The FreeBSD logo Image Image

In this series of blog posts, we're going to create a Android build server for continuous integration on FreeBSD.

Requirements


We want people from our project to be able to build APKs of a Android app and get them by email once they're built. People should be able to configure their app with some Jenkins parameters.

starting_a_jenkins_build_to_build_an_android_app_on_a_remote_freebsd_server

This post does not explain the basics of Jenkins. You should read the documentation if it's your first time using it.

You will need the following plugins:

Creating the node


In this scenario, I'm going to assume our FreeBSD build server is not on the same host as the Jenkins.

In consequence, we need to link the two systems by installing a Jenkins slave-node on the build system.

Preparing the server



On your Android build system, create a new user:

# pw group add -n jenkins-slave
# pw user add -n jenkins-slave -g jenkins-slave

Create a SSH key pair:

# ssh-keygen -t rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/jenkins-slave/.ssh/id_rsa): jenkins-slave-id_rsa
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in jenkins-slave-id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in jenkins-slave-id_rsa.pub.

Add the public key to your SSH's authorized_keys. That will be how Jenkins connect to the slave.

# mkdir ~/.ssh/
# cat jenkins-slave-id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Create the node on Jenkins


Go to "Manage Jenkins" -> "Manage credentials", and add a new "SSH Username with private key".
Put the private key you generated earlier there and configure the rest.

You used SSH keys, don't you?

Go to "Manage Jenkins" -> "Manage Nodes" and create a new node.

Configure the node with the right host, port and home directory. Set the location of the java executable, or Jenkins will only try to find it in /bin or /usr/bin and it won't work.
That won't connect. Did you forget about your firewall?

If everything goes well, the master node should connect to the server, install its JAR and start the slave node.

Nodes! More nodes!


# ls
jenkins-slave-pepper-id_rsa jenkins-slave-pepper-id_rsa.pub slave.jar workspace

# ps -U jenkins-slave
PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
66474 - IJ 0:08.67 sshd: jenkins-slave@notty (sshd)
66478 - IsJ 11:51.54 /usr/local/openjdk8/bin/java -jar slave.jar

Configuring the job



Create a new job, give it a nice name, and start the configuration.

The parameters



Click on "This build is parameterized", and add as many parameters as you want. You will be able to use these parameters as Jenkins variable everywhere later in the build.

I have another one with, like, 10 different parameters

Here I have two parameters:

Fetching the code



Configure Jenkins to fetch the source code of the app where it's located.

Gimme the code!
Here I'll fetch it from git.

Building the app



Add the required environment variables to the build.

This is a good environment, don't you think?

Add a gradle build script, and invoke the tasks to build your app. Here you can use the parameters you set up at the beginning of the config.

You can build without gradle if you want

You can build without the gradle plugin if you want. It only displays the build nicer but is strictly non essential.

Email the APKs once they're built



Add a post build step: "Editable Email Notification".

Put the recipient chosen by the user from the parameters into the list of recipients, customize the sender, reply-to, subject, content, etc.

Add the APK files as attachments.

Don't forget to configure the triggers to send the email if the build succeeds. By default, emails are only sent on failure.

Such a complicated configuration

Testing



Start a build. If everything goes well, you should receive the resulting APK by email a few seconds after the build is done.

jenkins_build_is_successfull_and_android_apk_was_build_and_sent_by_email