jenkins-std-lib VS espanso

> On a previous team I had used Concourse CI to some extent, but I wasn’t really blown away by the experience. Travis and Circle were mentioned. I was a fool. I should have committed to seriously researching some of the contenders and making a more informed decision, but I lacked the willpower and the discernment.

The whole post can be summed up as he had very little CICD experience. Made lots of beginner mistakes, which is easy to do in Jenkins. Then decided to write a post where all his complaints about Jenkins are not only wrong but are the issues that plague all the other CICD tools.

> So instead of writing Bash directly, you’re writing Bash inside Groovy

Why are you doing that? You have a fully featured programming language and you are running `sh('npm install')`. You could do this instead https://github.com/DontShaveTheYak/jenkins-std-lib/blob/mast... . How is bash inside of YAML better?

> The trouble is: Groovy is a much, much worse language for executing commands than Bash. Bash is interpreted, has a REPL that is great for experimentation, does require a ton of imports, and has lightweight syntax. Groovy has none of these things.

Groovy has a language server, linters and a vscode IDE plugins. They are probably not as stable or full featured as the bash ones, but they are available and very few take advantage of them. Again, how is YAML+Bash better?

> The way that developers test their Groovy steps is by triggering a job on the remote Jenkins server to run them. The feedback loop is 2 orders of magnitude slower than it is for just executing Bash locally.

This is a rookie mistake. For about 60-75% of pipelines you can run them locally in a docker container on your local machine. You can even set up hot code reload so as you change your pipeline the Jenkins reloads it. You can also configure the job to kick off a build when it reloads the code. When Jenkins is configured correctly it has the fastest feedback loop of any CICD tool on the market. GitHub actions comes in a close second since it can also be run locally but you cant run a "clone" of what you run in production, like having the same secrets, so it gets second place. Beside Jenkins and GitHub actions, I dont know of any solutions for the other tools.

You can run a GitHub action on Jenkins. It's a very deep and complex system. It's like an iceberg and so many engineers dont leave the surface before deciding it sucks and one of the YAML CICD tools is better. Sure the YAML alternatives are EASY to get started with and to do basic stuff with. But they are Terrible at anything complex. While Jenkins is not easy to get started with, once mastered, you can build complex pipelines with ease.

I get that I'm a Jenkins fanboy. Most of the things I mentioned above, I either contribute to or I'm the author of. I know Jenkins has issues. I know it has hurt lots of people, I read the complaints online. But it's still the best out there. The best software in the world is not written in bash or yaml and the same is true of the best CICD pipelines in the world. It's a shame very few people get to see/use those pipelines.

With Jenkins you can still run your favorite GitHub actions. https://github.com/DontShaveTheYak/jenkins-std-lib/blob/master/jobs/github/actions/step_example.groovy

This library has a lot of helpful features https://github.com/DontShaveTheYak/jenkins-std-lib , one of my favorites is being able to run GitHub actions natively in Jenkins pipelines.

Here is an example using s6 overlay https://github.com/DontShaveTheYak/jenkins-std-lib/tree/master/docker/prod

Run a Jenkins locally in docker. I use a vscode dev container for this. https://github.com/DontShaveTheYak/jenkins-std-lib/blob/master/.devcontainer/devcontainer.json

I do my best https://github.com/DontShaveTheYak/jenkins-std-lib

If you use Jenkins and want to try actions then check out https://github.com/DontShaveTheYak/jenkins-std-lib

It let's you run actions on top of Jenkins.

If you want a standalone cross platform text expander I currently enjoy using Espanso[1]

[1]: https://espanso.org/

# espanso match file # For a complete introduction, visit the official docs at: https://espanso.org/docs/ # You can use this file to define the base matches (aka snippets) # that will be available in every application when using espanso. # Matches are substitution rules: when you type the "trigger" string # it gets replaced by the "replace" string. matches: # signatures - trigger: ";n" replace: "Nikola" - trigger: ";b" replace: "Brežnjak" - trigger: ";li" replace: "https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikola-bre%C5%BEnjak-892b9a24/" - trigger: ";sn" replace: "Kind regards,\nNikola Brežnjak\nhttp://www.nikola-breznjak.com/blog" - trigger: ";web" replace: "http://www.nikola-breznjak.com/" - trigger: ";em" replace: "[email protected]" ## git - trigger: ";ga" replace: "git add ." - trigger: ";gb" replace: "git branch" - trigger: ";gc" replace: "git commit -m " - trigger: ";gd" replace: "git diff --color " - trigger: ";gf" replace: "git fetch --all" - trigger: ";gi" replace: "find . -name '.DS_Store' -type f -delete" - trigger: ";gl" replace: "git log" - trigger: ";gp" replace: "git push origin main" - trigger: ";gs" replace: "git status" - trigger: ";gt" replace: "git remote -v" - trigger: ";gu" replace: "git pull origin main" ## blog - trigger: ";bimp" replace: "https://nikola-breznjak.com/blog/books/want-improve-read-books/" - trigger: ";brem" replace: "https://nikola-breznjak.com/blog/miscellaneou/make-remote-developer/" ## emojis - trigger: ";eew" replace: "⚠️" - trigger: ";eet" replace: "🤔" - trigger: ";eeb" replace: "💰" - trigger: ";eem" replace: "💪" - trigger: ";eetm" replace: "™" - trigger: ";eeh" replace: "❤️" - trigger: ";eeu" replace: "👍" - trigger: ";eep" replace: "🙏" - trigger: ";eef" replace: "🤦" - trigger: ";ees" replace: "🙂" - trigger: ";eeg" replace: "😎" - trigger: ";eev" replace: "👋" - trigger: ";eel" replace: "😂" - trigger: ";eec" replace: "👏" - trigger: ";eeo" replace: "✅" - trigger: ";eer" replace: "🚀" - trigger: ";eex" replace: "⏭️" ## replies - trigger: ";ryw" replace: "You’re welcome 👍" - trigger: ";rlmk" replace: "Please let me know 👍" - trigger: ";rbtw" replace: "Btw, how are things on your end?" - trigger: ";rt" replace: "Thank you! 👍" ## misc - trigger: ";fd" replace: "firebase deploy" - trigger: ";wed" replace: "Happy Wednesday (a dy on which, historically, most people wed on - thus: Wed nes day). Not really, but it would be a fun fact actually 🙂" - trigger: ";cl" replace: "console.log(" - trigger: ";se" replace: "select * from " - trigger: ";o" replace: "open ." - trigger: ";im" replace: "" vars: - name: "clipb" type: "clipboard" - trigger: ";ch" replace: "chrome://history" - trigger: ";;c" replace: "code ."

This should work for you. Free, cross-platform and works everywhere not just the browser. https://espanso.org/

Huh, didn't know abbrev had that limitation (wonder why?). Gave it a go in espanso (https://espanso.org/), and it does work there.

I use a tool called "Espanso" to accomplish something similar at work. It only runs locally, so no weird data scraping issues to worry about. And it's easy to update as things changes becauase everything lives in a simple yml file.

https://espanso.org/

It can do simple text replacement, so I have words, phrases, and sentences I use frequently compressed into a few keyboard clicks. It can also grab what is in your clipboard, so that can be incorporated into responses, which is simple but very handy.

A simple text replacement looks like this in the yaml file:

If you don't know what a text expander is, see: https://espanso.org