Appendix C. Configuring a Jenkins freestyle project to deploy your application with the Fabric8 Maven Plugin

Similar to using Maven and the Fabric8 Maven Plugin from your local host to deploy an application, you can configure Jenkins to use Maven and the Fabric8 Maven Plugin to deploy an application.

Prerequisites

  • Access to an OpenShift cluster.
  • The Jenkins container image running on same OpenShift cluster.
  • A JDK and Maven installed and configured on your Jenkins server.

  • An application configured to use Maven, the Fabric8 Maven Plugin, and the Red Hat base image in the pom.xml.

    Example pom.xml

    <properties>
  ...
  <fabric8.generator.from>registry.access.redhat.com/redhat-openjdk-18/openjdk18-openshift</fabric8.generator.from>
</properties>

  • The source of the application available in GitHub.

Procedure

  1. Create a new OpenShift project for your application:

    1. Open the OpenShift Web console and log in.
    2. Click Create Project to create a new OpenShift project.
    3. Enter the project information and click Create.

  2. Ensure Jenkins has access to that project.

    For example, if you configured a service account for Jenkins, ensure that account has edit access to the project of your application.

  3. Create a new freestyle Jenkins project on your Jenkins server:

    1. Click New Item.
    2. Enter a name, choose Freestyle project, and click OK.
    3. Under Source Code Management, choose Git and add the GitHub url of your application.
    4. Under Build, choose Add build step and select Invoke top-level Maven targets.

    5. Add the following to Goals: 

      clean fabric8:deploy -Popenshift -Dfabric8.namespace=MY_PROJECT

      Substitute MY_PROJECT with the name of the OpenShift project for your application.

    6. Click Save.

  4. Click Build Now from the main page of the Jenkins project to verify your application builds and deploys to the OpenShift project for your application.

    You can also verify that your application is deployed by opening the route in the OpenShift project of the application.

Next steps

  • Consider adding GITSCM polling or using the Poll SCM build trigger. These options enable builds to run every time a new commit is pushed to the GitHub repository.
  • Consider adding a build step that executes tests before deploying.