All Tier 1 Plugins Support Configuration as Code

CloudBees has been working hard at delivering Configuration as Code (CasC) for CloudBees CI. A significant milestone has been reached this week with full support for all Tier 1 plugins for Configuration as Code. This key milestone coincides with Configuration as Code becoming generally available (GA) for CloudBees CI at the end of May. But before we talk about this milestone let’s first talk about what configuration as code is in general.

A key concept in cloud native DevOps is Everything as Code.

In the Everything as Code world that we live in now, you can use code-management tools to deal with complex things like configuring and customizing your applications and infrastructure. This allows you to make use of tools like version control, code comparison and replication for things that you would traditionally have to configure using a point-and-click user interface.

CloudBees CI and Jenkins are no exception to the Everything as Code model. As anyone who has set up a new Jenkins instance knows, this can be a detailed, time-consuming process, especially when you’re using the Manage Jenkins UI to do everything.

Configuration as code considerably simplifies the configuration of CloudBees CI. With configuration as code, you can turn complex configurations into easily-replicated, human-readable code files (YAML). You can manage those configuration files with source control tools like GitHub.

So how do plugins come into this picture? As you may know Jenkins and CloudBees CI are largely the sum of the plugins that have been installed. A lot of these plugins come with their own configuration, which is used to customize their behavior or define what they integrate with. 

Below is an example of a YAML configuration for the Kube Agent Management Plugin. This is a plugin which is used for configuring the Kubernetes Pod template for worker agents. 

Tier 1 plugins consist of both Verified & Proprietary plugins - 124 plugins to be exact. Enabling Configuration as Code support for all of them was a large undertaking but a necessary one as it made the management and governance of all them dramatically simpler. We also added test cases to make sure that future changes to the plugins don’t unexpectedly break configuration as code functionality. 

Full documentation can be found here:

Link to Documentation for CloudBees CI Configuration as Code (Modern Platforms)

Link to Documentation CloudBees CI Configuration as Code (Traditional Platforms)

Documentation for Tier 1 Plugins Supporting Configuration as Code (Modern Platforms)

Documentation for Tier 1 Plugins Supporting Configuration as Code (Traditional Platforms)

Currently, CloudBees does not support configuration as code for Tier 2 plugins. These are also referred to as Compatible Plugins. Out of the 112 Tier 2 plugins we have work planned to add support for Configuration as Code for 38 of these plugins. The remainder either do not require any configuration or already support configuration as code. The work to enable support for the Tier 2 plugins is planned for release in the fall of 2020. Tier 2 plugin enablement will be released piecemeal, so certain Tier 2 plugins will be released much earlier. 

Currently, CloudBees does not support configuration as code for Tier 2 plugins. These are also referred to as Compatible Plugins. Out of the 112 Tier 2 plugins we have work planned to add support for Configuration as Code for 38 of these plugins. The remainder either do not require any configuration or already support configuration as code. The work to enable support for the Tier 2 plugins is planned for release in the fall of 2020. Tier 2 plugin enablement will be released piecemeal, so certain Tier 2 plugins will be released much earlier. 

CloudBees CI Configuration as Code is built on top of open source Jenkins Configuration as Code. We would like to recognize all of the work which has been done in the open source community on this feature.

Any feedback or questions regarding CloudBees Configuration as Code in general or support of Tier 1 plugins is always welcome.