Okay, so today I messed around with setting up a Jenkins pipeline using something called “Walker.” It wasn’t as smooth as I hoped, but hey, that’s how these things go, right? Let me walk you through what I did.
First Steps – Getting Stuff Installed
First things first, I made sure I had Jenkins up and running. I already had it installed from before, so I just needed to start it up. Then, I went to the “Manage Jenkins” section and clicked on “Manage Plugins.” I needed to grab the “Walker” plugin, so I searched for it in the “Available” tab and ticked the box. Hit “Install without restart” and waited a bit while it did its thing.
Setting up a test Jenkins job
With Walker installed, I went on to the next thing. create a new “Freestyle project” in Jenkins – I just named it “Walker_Test”. My plan was simple: use Walker to, well, walk through some directories and maybe list some files. Basic stuff to see if it worked at all.
Configuring Walker
Inside the job configuration, I found the “Build Environment” section. There was a new checkbox that read “Enable Walker”. That must be the plugin, so I checked it. A bunch of new options popped up. I didn’t mess with most of them, just the “Walker Script” part.
I was not very familar with the syntax, so I wrote something super simple that would tell me if it would work. I hoped Walker used Groovy, like other Jenkins stuff, so I input this:
println "Hello from Walker!"
Saved the configuration and held my breath.
Running the Job (and Failing)
I clicked “Build Now” and the build started. It failed. Bummer. Checked the console output, and it was full of errors, complaining about, something. I was a bit lost, to be honest.
Figuring Things Out (Sort Of)
After some head-scratching and searching in my old files, I realized the Script looked totally wrong. I switched the script to below.
* = "."* { dir ->println "Walking directory: ${*}"* { file ->-
println " Found file: ${*}"
That looked way better! It’s supposed to start at the current directory (“.”) and then print out each directory and file it finds.
Running the Job (and Succeeding!)
Saved the changes and built it again. This time, success! The console output showed Walker happily listing directories and files from the Jenkins workspace. Finally!
What I Learned
My main takeaway from this first try is that is pretty simple.I have got to find some good examples or documentation, because guessing the syntax is a pain. But at least now I know it works, and I can start building some real pipelines with it. I can see how this could be useful for things like checking file structures, triggering builds based on certain files, maybe even cleaning up old builds… the possibilities are there, I just need to get comfortable with the tool.
I am going to explore more on this in the future, and I will make some notes here.
