Getting Groovy: CloudBees Flow Pipeline-as-Code in 1 Hour!

For some, a good IDE and UI is the best way to be productive. For others, working with a intuitive CLI/API and an old school text editor like Vim makes them efficient coding ninjas. That's why it's critical to give the right tools to the right users. Especially when you're building out your CI/CD and release automation practices. Some users - like Release Managers, DevOps Team Leads, or Enterprise Architects - may prefer to use a UI when building CI/CD pipelines, modeling applications, and orchestrating releases. Other users - like developers or DevOps engineers - may prefer the brevity and clarity of code. That's why, starting in Version 6.0, CloudBees Flow has added full support for pipeline-as-code with a powerful Domain Specific Language (DSL) based on the popular Apache Groovy language. CloudBees Flow's DSL automatically ensures that everything you model is backed by code , and vice-versa. And CloudBees Flow makes it super easy to toggle between UI and Code based views of your pipelines, releases, environments, and applications. This allows you to easily define your entire CI/CD and release orchestration process completely in code! What does this mean for your teams and your CI/CD efforts?

• Version Everything - Now your CI/CD and release orchestration can be part of your code repository, making your CI/CD pipelines and releases fully versionable, testable, and repeatable just like all your application code.
• Clean Up Messy Scripts - CloudBees Flow automatically  generates code for you, guaranteeing that all the objects in your process are backed by code. This allows you to eliminate that jumble of batch files and shell scripts and turn your process into a lean, mean, delivery machine!
• Make Teams More Efficient - the barrier between "coders" and "ui-ers" can often create silos, where developers hold all the mine share because no one else knows what they're writing. CloudBees Flow's "one-click" toggle between UI and code means that work can be immediately shared between teams - regardless of whether that work is done in the UI or in code. This makes teams more efficient and ensures that everyone can innovate!

A few weeks ago we put together a training to help educate our partners and world-wide field teams on this new way of working.  The session was a huge success. Take a look at this extended introduction to CloudBees Flow's DSL code to see how how powerful it is, and how quickly you can get up and running! In addition to the information and tips I go through in this training webinar, below are some links that may be helpful if you're more interested in pipeline-as-code:

• The full DSL documentation is available here.
• Code Samples and Template can be found on CloudBees Github DSL GitHub repository . If you need any assistance, please don’t hesitate to ask us .
• The slide deck of Greg Maxey’s presentation from DOES15 "Process as Code: An Introduction to CloudBees Flow DSL" can be found here .
• A Groovy Style Guide @ http://www.groovy-lang.org/style-guide.html
• Groovy Language Documentation @ http://www.groovy-lang.org/single-page-documentation.html

  Watch the recording of the training webinar »