Play! goes Workflow

April 21, 2015

Update 03.07.2020: Jenkins Pipelines reached sufficient maturity to render this plugin deprecated. I’m no longer maintainer of this plugin.

Few weeks ago I managed some time to bring the Play! plugin for Jenkins into the Workflow plugin. Learning how this migration is done was more relevant for me than the result itself :) Why?

The Play! plugin for Jenkins was specially useful because of the intuitive GUI aspect of it. It was designed so that Play1.x, Play2.x and Activator could be used in the same fashion, no matter the specifics of each one. Play2.x and Activator have different executables, but both use sbt underneath as build tool. Play1.x, on the other hand, does not use sbt at all and every goal must be executed in a separate command line. Their goals also differ. The Play! plugin was intended to minimize the differences with a single interface.

The Workflow plugin brings the whole story closer to command line again. Now, running pure Play/Activator commands directly from Groovy is as easy as invoking the Play! plugin itself in the same interface. That explains why the migration may not be that much relevant ;-) Still it’s nice to learn.

Hints on how to migrate your freestyle job to Workflow here. The already compatible plugins are also a good reference.

Hints on how to use the Play! plugin on Workflow:

Enjoy!