Hudson dependencies

Question

I have set up my hudson job A. Job A depends on job B and C. I have set them up with "Build other projects". This works well, although each job is in separate directory in my workspace (default structure). But I need job B and C in jobs A workspace (root folder).

I have considered two approaches:

1. Change the workspace for job A and push that variable to job via "Trigger parameterized build on other projects" and then use ant build script to copy them to that location, since I couldnt find an option to change the folder where job B or C should go
2. Trigger job B and then C from build script as part of job A. This is done via remote calls (found it somewhere on stackoverflow), but that option is missing in my configuration and I couldnt find any plugin that would add it.

Ideal approach for me would be to use ant build script and trigger job B and C from there with antsvn or something like that. But I cant find a solid example of this.

Reason why I want it this way is simple - job B is CMS which is essential for job A and job C has python scripts that need to be executed before new version can land on production server (this is already done with py-ant).

Or maybe there is some better way to manage dependencies like this. Any help is appreciated.

I hope it makes sense.

Answer 1

Think of Jobs "B" and "C" as producing "artifacts" that Job "A" needs. Then, all you have to do is import the artifacts produced by Jobs "B" and "C" whenever you build Job "A".

Your jobs shouldn't share workspaces. Otherwise what happens if Job "A" is building when Job "B" or "C" is triggered? You'll have multiple builds going on at once. However, if you separate out what "A" needs from jobs "B" and "C", you can have Job "A" import those dependencies. There are two ways of doing this:

• The hard but correct way: You should create a release repository where jobs can fetch the artifacts they need. If this sounds Mavinish to you, well, it is. However, I've used Maven architectural stuff without Maven projects and it works fine. You can use something like Artifactory or Nexus as your release repository. Then use wget or curl to fetch the items from the repository and use Maven's deploy:deploy-file plugin to send the stuff over. You will need Maven (which is a Java process) to run deploy:deploy-file, but you don't need a Maven project, or even a Java project. The deploy:deploy-file plugin doesn't even require a Maven pom.xml file. Think of it more like a command line utility to send stuff to your release repository.
• The easy, but incorrect way: Hudson has a Copy Artifacts plugin that you can use to do this. The problem is that it's easy to setup, but hard to start tracking. Plus, it makes you dependent upon a very specific tool. If you decide to move away from Hudson, you might not be able to duplicate this functionality.