© The Author(s), under exclusive license to APress Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022
P. P. DingareCI/CD Pipeline Using Jenkins Unleashedhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7508-5_6

6. Understanding the Global Tool Configuration Page

Pranoday Pramod Dingare1  
(1)
Pune, Maharashtra, India
 

When working with Jenkins, you may need to use different tools/technologies like Java, Maven, etc. This chapter explains how to configure JDK and Maven from the Global Tool Configuration page.

Global Tool Configuration Settings

Follow these steps to go to the Global Tool Configuration Settings page.
  1. 1.

    First, log in to Jenkins. Once you are logged in, you will see the Jenkins dashboard.

     
  2. 2.

    Click the Manage Jenkins link available on the Jenkins dashboard to open the Manage Jenkins page.

     
  3. 3.

    Go to the Global Tool Configuration page by clicking the Global Tool Configuration link highlighted in Figure 6-1.

     

The user interface of the Manage Jenkins section from the Jenkins dashboard. System Configuration, Security, and Status Information are some of the functions under the Manage Jenkins section with their sub-functions, except for Status Information, observable. Global Tool Configuration under System Configuration is marked by a rectangle.

Figure 6-1

The Manage Jenkins page

Clicking the Global Tool Configuration link will open the Global Tool Configuration page shown in Figure 6-2.

The Global Tool Configuration page after clicking the Global Tool Configuration link under the System Configuration. The default settings provider and default global settings provider are set to default under the Maven Configuration section. Add J D K and Maven installation functions are observed in their respective section.

Figure 6-2

The Global Tool Configuration page

If you have plugins related to other third-party tools such as Gradle or Git installed in Jenkins, you will see settings related to these tools on this page.

Understanding the Global Tool Configuration Settings

Let’s look at the settings related to a build tool called Maven. Maven helps you automate different build phases of a Java application like compilation, packaging, and deploying. Maven is a command-line interface build tool that performs its tasks with the help of different plugins. Maven can be configured using the following two configuration files:

  • The Maven install (called the global settings): The default location of this file is ${maven.home}conf and the file is called settings.xml file. maven.home refers to the Maven installation directory.

  • A user’s install (called the user settings): The default location of this file is {user.home}/.m2 and this file is also called settings.xml. The {user.home} part refers to the current user directory. We cover Maven in detail in Chapter 11.

These files contain settings required to execute Maven in order to build different Java projects. If different users working on the same machine want to keep their specific Maven settings, they keep these settings in the user settings file, whereas all common Maven settings that will be shared by all user profiles go in the global settings file.

You don’t have to have the Maven settings.xml in the user’s install, i.e., ${user.home}/.m2/settings.xml. If this file is not present, the required settings are taken from the Maven install’s settings.xml file. If the same setting is present in both settings.xml files, the setting in the ${user.home}/.m2/settings.xml gets preference.

While configuring Maven inside Jenkins, Jenkins needs to know the locations of the user and global settings.xml files. If these files are present at their default locations, keep the Use Default Maven Settings option selected in the Default Settings Provider field and the Use Default Maven Global Settings option selected in the Default Global Setting Provider field, as shown in Figure 6-3.

A zoomed portion of the Maven Configuration section under the Global Tool Configuration page. Default settings provider and Default global settings provider sub-sections have their picklist menu where the observed inputs of choice are the default Maven-related settings.

Figure 6-3

The Maven Configuration section

Maven Configuration

If these files are present in different locations, select the Settings File in Filesystem option from the Default Settings Provider dropdown and the Global Settings File on Filesystem option from the Default Global Settings Provider dropdown. Then specify the path of these files, as shown in Figure 6-4.

A zoomed portion of the Maven Configuration section exhibiting the file path settings for the Default settings provider and Default global settings provider. D colon backslash User Settings dot x m l and E colon backslash Common Settings dot x m l are their respective file path from the Settings file and Global settings file in filesystems inputs.

Figure 6-4

Maven Configuration section with settings.xml paths

The second part that you need to understand related to Maven is its installation. Let’s look at how you configure the Maven installations.

Click the Add Maven button. This will open the Maven Installations section. In the Name field, give the Maven configuration a name. Do not use numbers, whitespace, or special characters in the name, as Jenkins Pipelines wanting to use Maven refer this Maven configuration. (More on Jenkins Pipelines in Chapter 14.) If a machine running a Jenkins job already has Maven installed, then uncheck the Install Automatically checkbox, as highlighted in Figure 6-5.

The marked Install automatically checkbox in the Maven Installations sub-section under the Maven main section. The fields with input boxes are Name and Maven underscore Home, in which both return Error results probably due to their empty input boxes. The options to Add or Delete Maven are observed as well as the Save and Apply buttons.

Figure 6-5

Install Automatically checkbox from the advanced settings related to the Maven Installation section

In the MAVEN_HOME field, provide the location of the Maven installation directory, as shown in Figure 6-6.

The required fields under the Maven Installations sub-section of the Maven main section. The Name and Maven underscore Home fields have their inputs set to My Maven Configuration and D colon backslash apache dash maven dash 3.6.3, respectively. The Maven underscore Home field is boxed.

Figure 6-6

The Required fields filled in inside the Maven Installation section

Click the Save button to save the configuration.

If the machine running the Jenkins job does not have Maven installed and you want Jenkins to install it automatically while running a job, you have to check the Install Automatically checkbox and configure the installer. Jenkins will do this only the first time it runs a job on a machine where Maven isn’t installed.

Let’s see how to configure a Maven installation whereby a Maven .ZIP/.TAR file is extracted.

Click the Add Installer dropdown and select the Extract *.zip/*.tar.gz option, as shown in Figure 6-7.

The installer configuration options under the Maven Installations sub-section. The checkbox for the Install automatically option is checked. The Install from Apache with 3.8.1 Version is observed underneath. The Add Installer button exhibits a list to choose from. The chosen option is Extract asterisk zip slash asterisk dot tar dot g z.

Figure 6-7

Configuring the Maven Installer

In the Download URL for Binary Archive field, enter the apache-maven-3.8.1-bin.zip URL from the Maven website, as shown in Figure 6-8. For example: https://dlcdn.apache.org/maven/maven-3/3.8.2/binaries/apache-maven-3.8.2-bin.zip.

The installers under the Maven Installations sub-section. The Install automatically checkbox is checked, while Install from Apache with 3.8.1 Version and Extract asterisk p dot zip slash asterisk dot tar dot g z are exhibited underneath. The Download U R L for binary archive field under the latter is boxed.

Figure 6-8

Maven download URL configured in Maven Installer

In the Subdirectory of Extracted Archive field, provide the name of the directory that will contain the Maven installation after unzipping the folder.

When Jenkins performs the Maven installation while running a Jenkins job that needs it, it will unzip the folder downloaded from the URL mentioned in the Download URL for Binary Archive field. Then Jenkins will unzip this .ZIP to provide the Maven build tool to the directory structure shown in Figure 6-9.

The File Explorer exhibits the contents inside the apache-maven-3.8.1 file. The bin, boot, c o n f, and l i b folders, the License and Notice files, and Read Me text document are the observed content. The address bar exhibits the access flow from This PC, Data D open and close parentheses D colon, New Folder, and apache-maven-3.8.1.

Figure 6-9

The directory structure of Maven

As shown in Figure 6-9, the Maven tool is inside a directory named apache-maven-3.8.1. So apache-maven-3.8.1 should be the value in the Subdirectory of Extracted Archive field. That way, Jenkins will consider this directory the Maven installation location and can access Maven using the mvn command present in the bin folder.

Click the Save button on the page to save the configuration.

Java Configuration

Click the Add JDK button

If you already have Java on your machine, uncheck the Installed Automatically checkbox, provide a suitable name in the Name field, and include the absolute path of the Java installation directory in the JAVA_HOME field, as shown in Figure 6-10.

A zoomed portion of the J D K Configuration section exhibiting the required Name, and Jave Home fields in the J D K Installations sub-section. Both have the inputs J D K 11 and D colon backslash open j d k dash 11 underscore windows dash x 64 underscore bin backslash j d k dash 11, respectively. Add J D K and Delete J D K buttons are given.

Figure 6-10

The Name and JAVA_HOME fields configured in the JDK Configuration section

If you do not have JDK installed and want Jenkins to install it on demand, then check the Installed Automatically checkbox and configure the installer as explained in the previous Maven configuration section.

Summary

This chapter explained how to set up important tools like Maven and JDK. If any Jenkins job needs these tools and job execution machine does not have them, those jobs will fail. Jenkins installs these tools using configured installers, which is considered a very important feature of Jenkins. The next chapter talks about how to manage security in Jenkins using its different security related features to implement authentication and authorization in Jenkins.

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