General Information

A Jenkins Multibranch pipeline job is flexible because it scans your project for all available branches that have a matching Jenkinsfile and adds that pipeline job.

Checklist

• Jenkins master server installed
• Available Git repo

Creating a multibranch pipeline is similar to creating a standard pipeline job.

• Click “New Item”
• Enter an item name: <name of multibranch job>
• Click “Multibranch Pipeline”, then click “Ok”

After creation, you are brought to the initial multibranch pipeline configuration page.

• Under “Branch Sources”, click “Add source”, then click the type of project (such as Git)
  • Project Repository: <paste URL that you can clone the project from>
  • Credentials: Select your saved project credentials (if required)
  • Behaviors: Default is to discover all branches
  • Build strategies: There are a number of build strategies that can influence which branches are built and when.
    • See the next section for some of them.
    • Note: The default of no build strategies will execute each pipeline found in each branch upon initial discovery (such as when you click Save) OR after each scan that finds a commit change. If this is NOT the desired behavior, look at the available build strategies.
  • Build Configuration
    • Mode: by Jenkinsfile
    • Script Path: Enter the path to the Jenkinsfile stored in the project. This is the pipeline file that will be scanned for in each branch.
  • Scan Multibranch Pipeline Triggers: Check this box and select how often to scan the project for branches and Jenkinsfiles in those branches.
  • Click “Save” to save the job configuration

Build strategies are ways to limit what branches are built and when.

• “Suppress automatic SCM triggering”
  • Do not build on changes during a multibranch scan.
  • Note: This strategy is removed when you install the plugin “Basic Branch Build Strategies Plugin” below, but can be achieved in a different way.

• Install the plugin: Basic Branch Build Strategies Plugin
  • “All Strategies Match”
    • The strategies contained are all used together. This strategy must be used to contain the next two if you don't want automatic scm triggering.
    • “Skip initial build on first branch indexing”
      • Don't build upon initial branch discovery (will build every time after if changes are discovered unless further build strategies are added)
    • “Named Branches”
      • Add “Wildcard include/exclude”
        • “Exclude: *”
          • This will exclude all matched branch names from building - useful if you only want to build branches explicitly and not automatically. (such as deploy jobs) You could also only exclude branches that may deploy to production (For example: master)