如何正确设置詹金斯环境

Question

I have a fresh build server and need to setup jenkins there. So I created a first user on the Mac mini, and used that user to install Jenkins on the machine.

Jenkins then created another user (Jenkins) on the Mac Mini. I thought that correct way to proceed is to login as that Jenkins user (with Admin rights) and prepare the build environment as this Jenkins user.

But I cant install Visual Studio for MAC, cant install SourceTree... bcs even though Jenkins has Admin rights, I am getting

"You do not have permissions to open the application 'Install Visual Studio for Mac' contact your administrator..." message.

But as I said the Jenkins user is Admin user. So am I doing it wrong? What user should prepare all the build tools? And if it is supposed to be the first user I created (after booting the Mac mini for the 1st time), how do I let Jenkins use the apps then? When I tried doing this on my macbook, jenkins couldnt use some of the build tools, bcs apparently it did not have the permissions to do so.

So what is the correct way to set up a jenkins environment, so I can install whatever tools I need, and Jenkins can use these during builds/deploys?

Any help appreciated, all the guides about jenkins speak of jenkins user, but none gave me an idea what is the best way to set this all up.

Answer 1

My 2 cents.

I have not worked with MAC. So some of my assumptions may be wrong or suggestions may be not applicable to you.

I have set up Jenkins mostly on Linux and a couple of times on Windows. I used to install Jenkins using the RPM package which, upon installation, will create a 'jenkins' user and group.

• For start/stop/restart, I always use 'sudo' since Jenkins is installed as a service.
• Other build related tools like Java, Maven etc, I always make sure that Jenkins can access them and execute them. ie, I give execute privilege on those tools.
• The JENKINS_HOME directory, I used to create a symbolic link from the default home directory to a file system with enough storage. I will do the same for Jenkins log file. The benefit of having those Jenkins/tool files/directories as part of a custom defined directory structure is that I do not need to remember installation paths of each tool. ie, I have my Jenkins, maven, java, sonarQube everything under a directory I know. Even if I set up these tools in different servers, I will stick to the same directory structure.

My suggestions to you.

1. Setup build tools which are to be used/accessed from Jenkins, set them up with your 'first user' and give execute privilege to Jenkins user/group.

2. Create a directory 'ci' and link or place all tools inside. You can further have subdirectories for app - for binaries/installed files, data - for generated data like Jenkins_home, log - to keep log files of these tools.

     ci/jenkins ci/sourcetree ci/apache-maven 

Suggestion 2 is initially time-consuming but it will save a lot of your time as you use the tools on a daily basis.