Setting Groovy version on global level for all pipeline jobs

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1

Issue: We noticed a bug in Groovy 2.4.21 and require an upgrade to version 2.5, the university has about 80 to 90 pipeline jobs running as “Pipeline script from SCM”. I don’t want to go through each job and set the groovy version within the script.

I have read and watched the following links

https://issues.jenkins.io/browse/JENKINS-53372

I have a couple of questions just to confirm my understanding

  1. From the links above i’m gathering Im unable to set the Groovy Version on a global level to override Jenkins Core Groovy ?

  2. I will need to update each pipeline script and set the Groovy version correctly (this setting is based on Manage Jenkins / Global Tool Configuration / Groovy) ?

  3. Our agents are deployed via pre-built images, if I install / Configure GROOVY_HOME within the image I still need to configure the pipeline script to call the version set within “Global Tool Configuration”

Any thoughts or tips/tricks to manage this number of pipe jobs that require the Groovy version update?

2

Hello @ReidWat :wave:

I’m not an expert on that, I just have read a few things.
Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will chime in.
As far as I can tell, you can’t set the Groovy version on a global level to override Jenkins Core’s Groovy.
You would need to update each pipeline script and set the Groovy version correctly.
As for managing a large number of pipeline jobs that require the Groovy version update, you could try the following:

  1. Use the Jenkins command line client (CLI) to update the pipeline scripts in bulk. This may be a more efficient way to update a large number of jobs instead of manually editing each one.
  2. You could maybe switch to using a Jenkinsfile instead of a Pipeline script from SCM. This could maybe allow you to manage the Groovy version in the Jenkinsfile and make updates more easily.
pipeline {
    agent any
    tools {
        groovy 'Groovy-2.5.14'
    }
    stages {
        stage('Build') {
            steps {
                sh 'groovy -version'
            }
        }
    }
}
  1. I know this won’t help for existing pipelines, but you could maybe create a template pipeline script for new pipelines that includes the Groovy version and use it as a basis for creating new pipeline jobs. :person_shrugging:
  2. Use a sledgehammer to crack a nut: why not use a configuration management tool like Ansible or Puppet to manage the Jenkins configuration, including the Groovy version?
3

Sorry just have one more question, the devs wrote the following templates and I’m trying to estimate how work/time is required to manually update them

#!groovy
package pipelines.templates

pipeline {
    agent { label("maven-test-agent") }
    stages {
        stage("Setup workspace") {
            steps {
                script {
                    def workspace = load "src/modules/Workspace.groovy"
                    workspace.setup("resources/definitions/ecsDeployTemplate.yaml", false)
                }
            }
        }
       stage("Create ECS Build Deploy job") {
            steps {
                script {
                    log.heading("Create ECS Build Deploy job")
                    def jenkins = load "src/modules/Jenkins.groovy"
                    jenkins.createPipeline()
                }
            }
        }
    }
    post {
        always {
            script {
                def postAction = load "src/modules/PostAction.groovy"
                postAction.perform(false, true)
            }
        }
    }
}

Please correct me if im wrong but I need to rewrite these templates and move away from using script steps because if I set the following “withGroovy” this seems to be ignored and still triggers jenkins core groovy version 2.4.21

pipeline {
    agent { label("maven-test-image") }
    tools {
           groovy 'Groovy-2.5.1'
    }

or

 post {
        always {
            script {
                withGroovy(tool:'Groovy-2.5.1'){
                    def postAction = load "src/modules/PostAction.groovy"
                    data.athena.metadata["updated"] = false
                     postAction.perform(false)
                 }
            }
        }
    }

so for example I should be using the following

 stage ('Example') {
            steps {
                withGroovy(tool:'Groovy-2.5.1') {
                    sh 'groovy deploy.groovy'
                }
            }