The software development lifecycle has been drastically impacted with the advent of continuous integration tools such as Jenkins CI. That’s why we’re happy to announce developers can use now Jenkins to push applications onto the Apprenda PaaS’ testing or production environments as part of their continuous integration story.

The integration combines Apprenda’s policy-based deployment engine with Jenkins’ easier deployment model, resulting in greater compliance and speedier time to market. IT administrators need not worry about developers adding to virtual machine sprawl, opening up security holes, or increasing the surface area for malicious behavior. By implementing policy-based controls over the infrastructure, a developer can seamlessly move their application from source to deployment via the Jenkins-Apprenda integration.

The plugin is designed to extend functionality within the Jenkins CI environment. It has the capability of performing the following:

• Smart Version Detection – To prevent downtime for production applications, the plugin communicates with the Apprenda platform whether the application is already published, and the new version is created if needed.
• Target Stage Deployments – For software engineers with short development cycles that demand rapid changes, the Apprenda plugin deploys the version of the application into Definition, Sandbox (Test), or Published (Production).
• Custom Versioning – Developers can provide a custom prefix for the application version, allowing for user-defined branch development and testing. For example, versions can be named after branches on their source control repositories, specific features or functionality, and more.

The plugin utilizes the Apprenda Developer REST API, which provides hooks for developers to interact with their applications using familiar protocols. Credentials are stored within the Jenkins Credentials plugin, which is the best practice for managing secure connections.

Apprenda’s integration with Jenkins CI provides developers a novel, efficient means of deploying their applications to a testing or published environment. We’ll continue to innovate and provide additional functionality to help improve the software development lifecycle and integrate with beneficial tools, such as Jenkins CI.

Want to talk to us about using Apprenda and Jenkins CI together? Get in touch.