Can Jenkins handle an gui/non-gui interactive python or java program?

Question

I want to create a build pipeline, and developers need to set up a few things into a properties file which gets populated using a front end GUI.

I tried running sample CLI interactive script using python that just asked for a name and prints it out afterwards, but Jenkins just waited for ages then hanged. I see that it asked for the input, but there was no way for the user to input the data.

EDIT: Currently running Jenkins as a service..Or is there a good plugin anyone recommends or is it the way I created the python script?

Preference: I would prefer to use Python because it is a little lightweight, but if people had success with other languages I can comprise.

Using a GUI menu to populate the data, would be cool because I can use option boxes, drop down menus and make it fancy but it isn't a necessity, a CLI is considerably better than our current deployment.

BTW, running all this on Windows 7 laptop running Python 2.7 and Java 1.7

Sorry for the essay! Hopefully people can help me!

Answer 1

Sorry, but Jenkins is not an interactive application. It is designed for automated execution.

The only viable way to get input to a Jenkins job (and everything that is executed from that job) is with the job parameters that are populated before the job is started. Granted, Jenkins GUI for parameter entry is not the greatest, but it does the job. Once the Jenkins job collected the job parameters at the start of the job, it can pass those parameters to anything it executes (Python, shell, whatever) at any time during the job. Two things have to be true for that to happen:

• You need to collect all the input data before the job starts
• Whatever your job calls (Python, shell, etc) need to be able to receive their input not interactively, but through command line.

How to get input into program

A well designed script should be able to simply accept parameters on the command line:

./goodscript.sh MyName will be the simplest way of doing it, where value MyName will be stored in $1 first parameter of the script. Subsequent command line parameters will be available in variables $2, $3 and so on.

./goodscript.sh -name MyName -age 30 will be a better way of doing it, where the script can take multiple parameters regardless of their order by specifying a parameter name before parameter value. You can read about using getopt for this method of parameter passing

Both examples above assume that the goodscript.sh is written well enough to be able to process those command line parameters. If the script does not explicitly process command line parameters, doing the above will be useless.

You can "pipe" some output to an interactive script that is not designed to handle command line parameters explicitly:
echo MyName | ./interactivescript.sh will pass value MyName to the first interactive prompt that interactivescript.sh provides to the user. Problem with this is that you can only pass a value to the first interactive prompt.

Jenkins job parameters GUI

Like I said above, you can use Jenkins GUI to gather all sorts of job parameters (dropdown lists, checkboxes, text entry). I assume you know how to setup Jenkins job with parameters. If not, in the job configuration click "This build is parameterized" checkbox. If you can't figure out how to set this up, that's a different question and will need to be explained separately.

However, once your Jenkins job collected all the parameters up front, you can reference them in your "execute shell" step. If you are using Windows, you will reference them as %PARAM_NAME%, and for Linux as $PARAM_NAME.

Explain what you need help with: getting your script to accept command line parameters, or passing those command line parameters from jenkins job GUI, and I will expand this answer further