Introducing pipelines
A pipeline is a sequence of automated operations that usually represents a part of the software delivery and quality assurance process. It can be seen as a chain of scripts that provide the following additional benefits:
- Operation grouping: Operations are grouped together into stages (also known as gates or quality gates) that introduce a structure into a process and clearly define a rule – if one stage fails, no further stages are executed.
- Visibility: All aspects of a process are visualized, which helps in quick failure analysis and promotes team collaboration.
- Feedback: Team members learn about problems as soon as they occur so that they can react quickly.
Information
The concept of pipelining is similar to most continuous integration tools. However, the naming can differ. In this book, we will stick to the Jenkins terminology.
Let's first describe the Jenkins pipeline structure and then how...