Integrating your GitHub project into Jenkins

☛  August 24, 2013   ❝Integrating your GitHub project into Jenkins❞

Categorized   tools   ≀   Tagged   how.to   github   jenkins  

If you want your Jenkins builds to start immediately after you pushed some changes to your repository, all that is needed is a little additional configuration.

Jenkins Configuration

To get rid of the obvious stuff, you of course have to add your Git repository to Source Code Management. Additionally, for Jenkins to use the GitHub service hook we add next, check the Build when a change is pushed to GitHub trigger in Build Triggers.

In order for your Jenkins instance to work together with GitHub and the above to be part of your Jenkins web interface, install the git, git-client, git-server, github, and github-api Jenkins plugins. Those are the ones installed on the Jenkins I used, they might not all be needed for push notifications to work. To find out what's installed on a Jenkins instance, refer to this stackoverflow answer.

If you have the libxml2-utils package and the httpie Python package installed, this will give you a nice list:

$ http -b "${JENKINS_URL%/}/pluginManager/api/xml?depth=1&xpath=/*/*/shortName|/*/*/version&wrapper=plugins" \
    | xmllint --format - | grep -i -A1 git
  <shortName>git</shortName>
  <version>1.4.0</version>
…

GitHub Configuration

Go to Service Hooks in theSettings of your repository, and select Jenkins (GitHub plugin) from the list. Then enter the Jenkins Hook Url as described in the notes below the settings form, make the hook Active and save it. To test your configuration, use the Test Hook button.

Engage!

If you did all of the above, open your project in Jenkins, and then push some changes. Like magic, a build should be started…