How to trigger XL Release task from Jenkins ? Is it possible?

Question

I have a CI pipeline configured on Jenkins. When the jobs execute successfully, I want a trigger to pass on to XL Release so that it automatically triggers the deployment process. Is this possible ?

Answer 1

There's the Jenkins-XLR plugin that you can install straight from Jenkins. In Jenkins, go to Manage Jenkins > Manage Plugins and search for the XL Release plugin.

The plugin page is here: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/XL+Release+Plugin

Some more information can be found in this blog post.

Answer 2

One other approach you could consider is having XL Release drive your CI, by creating a Build / (Provision) / Deploy / Test template. This template polls your SCM, and when kicked off, executes the phases:

• Build Phase: Jenkins plugin to run Jenkins, and store output to variable
• Provision Phase: Some customers have this phase, since they need to run Salt/Puppet/Chef/Ansible type provisioning as part of the overall deployment
• Deploy Phase: XL Deploy plugin
• Test Phase: Kick off any other tests you do as part of the deployment

Some benefits to this approach:

• XL Release gives you visibility / information across the disparate tools used for delivery
• If you include testing in each phase, you can make decisions about proceeding or not during each phase
• You could automatically kick off subsequent releases (to QA, for example) if the entire release passed.

You can also see an example this here XLRelease Provision, Build, Deploy and Test