Introduction
Abigail Afi Gbadago is my name and I am a Software Engineer(on the Backend) from
Ghana. I love spending my time contributing to and building tech communities.
At the beginning of the year, I decided to be intentional about contributing to Open
Source and Technical Writing (bit.ly/3qJ2vce) so I applied for the SheCodeAfrica
Contributhon Cohort 2 and got the opportunity of being selected. I was assigned to
the Jenkins Pipeline Help Project.
Jenkins Pipeline Project Help
Jenkins is a self-contained, open source Automation Server which can be used
to automate all sorts of tasks that revolve around building, testing and deployment
of software.
A pipeline is a set of plugins that help you implement continuous integration and
delivery into Jenkins.
CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) simply represents the
process of getting code/software from version control systems like Git or Bitbucket
right through to your users.
The Jenkins Pipeline Steps Reference and Pipeline online help need more examples;
step return values need to be described, and arguments need more description of their
purpose, allowed values and expected results.
- This project aims to improve the documentation of pipeline steps and their
arguments while introducing Jenkins Pipeline, Jenkins plugin development,
Jenkins documentation as code, and the concepts of GitHub forks and pull
requests.
Summary of the BootCamp
The BootCamp started on the 5th of April, 2022 with an onboarding call where
the Open-Source Programs Manager at She Code Africa, Zainab Abubakar
congratulated us and gave in-depth information about the program.
We were introduced to our projects, mentors and mentees. I was paired with
Sophia Okito to work on the Jenkins Pipeline Project with Mark E. Waite as my
mentor.
Subsequent meetings were scheduled to track progress and contributions.
Challenges Faced
Initially, the Pipeline build step plugin showed that my Maven was not working
so I had to reinstall Maven and confirm that it was working.
Also, I faced some issues with Windows Subsystem for Linux(WSL) and setting
up my Jenkins Service (it was a bit tricky).
These and other issues were resolved with the help of my mentor @MarkEWaite
who is very helpful and patient, always willing to schedule calls to solve issues.
Experience gained
I have sharpened my skills with regard to reading technical documentation
effectively.
I learned a lot more about the Jenkins Pipeline and about building pipelines with
the Snippet Generator which is a handy tool I discovered. I also got to explore Blue
Ocean and I contributed to improving the documentation of pipeline steps and their
arguments.
To see my contributions on Github, click here
I improved upon my technical skills and valuable soft skills such as communicating effectively(not being shy to ask for help), getting feedback, and collaborating with my
teammate Sophia Okito and asking the right questions in order to get clarity or help.
Feedback
I believe reading a bit about the project or tool you are working on (which in my case
is Jenkins) will be helpful so that you have a bit of familiarity.
Also, there should be more materials on setting up, especially on Windows since that
can be challenging.
Next Steps
This has been a great experience. I would like to thank the SheCodeAfrica community
for this opportunity to be an Open Source Contributor. A big thank you to @MarkEWaite
and @poddingue, my mentors who have been so awesome and of great help during this
contribution period and to my teammate Sophia who has been a great team player.
I look forward to contributing to this project after this boot camp.