TL;DR Is there a way to import code into the Jenkinsfile from the local repository (other than the load step)?

Why?

I've experienced that for complex builds the Jenkinsfile gets kind of bulky and not very maintainable.
Now that the build job is code, it would be wonderful to have the same means as for other code. That is, I would like to divide it into smaller (more maintainable) units and unit test them.

What I tried

• shared libraries: allow for dividing our Jenkins Pipeline logic into smaller files in a separate module and even unit test it.
  However, they need to be in different repository and (if not on GitHub) must be configured into Jenkins.
• load Step: Allow for loading groovy scripts from the repository.
  However, the files must be scripts and not "full" groovy classes, making it difficult to have multiple files or classes that depend on each other. For example inheritance is impossible.
  In addition, theses files are not displayed when doing a replay on a Jenkins job, which makes them hard to develop and debug.

My Questions

• Is there a way (or workaround) to create a shared library in the same repository as the Jenkinsfile and import this library into the Jenkinsfile?
• Or is there even another way I haven't tried, yet?

Example directory structure

Similar to the directory structure described for shared libs I would like to have the following in a single repository.

(root)
+- someModule
|   +- ...
+- jenkins           # Classes/Scripts used by Jenkins in a separate module
|   +- src                       # Groovy source files
|      +- org
|          +- foo
|              +- Bar.groovy     # for org.foo.Bar class
|   +- test                      # Groovy test files
|      +- org
|          +- foo
|              +- BarTest.groovy # Test for org.foo.Bar class
|   +- pom.xml or build.groovy   # Build for local library
+- Jenkinsfile     # Build "someModule", uses classes from "jenkins" module

Workaround:

library identifier: 'shared-library@version', retriever: legacySCM(scm)

The approach currently taken in PR 37 will not work properly with build agents, and anyway will only work for scripts using the library step, not the @Library annotation.

By the way files loaded from the load step do appear in Replay. But it is true that your script cannot statically refer to types defined in such files. In other words, you could simulate library vars/*.groovy but not src/**/*.groovy—the same limitation as the current PR 37.

I guess that proper way to do that is to implement a custom SCMRetriever.

However, you can use the following hack:

Assuming jenkins/vars/log.groovy in your local repo contains:

def info(message) {
    echo "INFO: ${message}"
}

Your Jenkinsfile can load that shared library from the jenkins/ directory using library step:

node('node1') { // load library
    checkout scm
    // create new git repo inside jenkins subdirectory
    sh('cd jenkins && git init && git add --all . && git commit -m init &> /dev/null') 
    def repoPath = sh(returnStdout: true, script: 'pwd').trim() + "/jenkins"
    library identifier: 'local-lib@master', retriever: modernSCM([$class: 'GitSCMSource', remote: repoPath])
}

node('node2') {
    stage('Build') {
        log.info("called shared lib") // use the loaded library
    }
}

You may take a look at plugin I wrote, that enables using subdirectories of repo where your pipeline is as shared libraries: https://github.com/karolgil/SharedLibrary

After building and installing it, you can simply put following in your pipeline:

@SharedLibrary('dir/in/repo') _

To start using dir/in/repo as shared library for your pipelines.

Wanted to do the same and ended up creating this:

https://github.com/jenkinsci/workflow-cps-global-lib-plugin/pull/37

and here is how I use it:

https://github.com/syndesisio/syndesis-pipeline-library/blob/master/Jenkinsfile#L3

In my case I wanted to create a Jenkinsfile that actually tests the pipeline library that the repository contains.

Let me know what you think and feel free to add your comments on the PR too.