UIs do have their purpose. They are supposed to provide enough colors and random graphs for CIO, CTO, and other C-level executives and mid-level managers. Management works in multi-color, while engineers should be limited to dual-color terminals, mixed with a slightly increased color pallet of IDEs and editors we use to code. We produce commits, while managers fake interest by looking at UIs.

The preceding phrase is a bit exaggerated. It's not true that UIs are useful only to managers nor that they fake interest. At least, that's not true for all of them. UIs do provide a lot of value but, unfortunately, they are often abused to the level of even postponing or even preventing automation. We'll try to make an additional effort to remove Jenkins UI for any setup related tasks. We'll try to automate everything.

We already improved a lot our ability to install Jenkins. A mere switch from custom-made YAML files to Helm Charts is a considerable step forward from the operational perspective. The addition of ServiceAccounts bound to Roles improved security. But, there's still one big thing left only partly explored. We did not yet reach the point where we can install and fully setup Jenkins from a command line. So far, there were always a few things we had to do manually from its UI. We'll try to get rid of those steps in the hope that the only command we'll need to execute is helm install.

As it often goes, we cannot hope to fully automate the setup without going through manual steps first. So, we'll start by exploring different use-cases. If we hit a road-block, we'll try to figure out how to overcome it. The chances are that another one will be waiting for us after the first, and another one after that.

We're yet to see which obstacles we'll encounter and which steps are missing until we make Jenkins fully operational and, at the same time, reasonably secure. We'll try to automate the process only once we're confident in the way we set up Jenkins manually.