Jenkins pipelines and continuous integration

Over the last few weeks, I have been focused on improving automated deployment for java web applications using Jenkins. In particular, much of the focus has been on doing so by using the pipeline plugin.

This is a pretty great tool because it allows for automated deployment in a scripted fashion. If there’s one thing that has frustrated me, however, it is the documentation for how to use the various “steps” the pipeline script allows you to write into a deployment script. To understand, check this page of steps documentation.

My main beefs are:

1. No examples. At all.
2. Horrendous formatting. I frequently forget whether the type comes above or below the property I’m attempting to use.
   It’s confusing.
3. Huge learning curve. Groovy script is cool, except that this seems not to be true Groovy script, but a sort of encapsulation in which Groovy is allowed in parts, but not in others.
4. Basically zero documentation on the “scripted pipeline” method of doing this.

Great tool. Bad documentation. Hard to learn, but awesome once it’s learned.