Interview › Scripting (Bash, Groovy)
How is Groovy used to write Jenkins pipelines? [Advanced]
Answer
Groovy is used in Jenkins to define pipelines as code. Declarative and Scripted Pipeline both use Groovy syntax or Groovy-based DSLs to define stages, steps, agents, environment variables, post actions, and deployment logic.
Technical explanation
A Jenkinsfile is stored with application code so build and deployment behavior is versioned with the repository.
Pipeline steps such as sh, checkout, archiveArtifacts, retry, timeout, and withCredentials are exposed as Groovy-callable DSL steps.
For reusable logic, teams move common code into Jenkins shared libraries written in Groovy.
Hands-on example
pipeline {
agent any
stages {
stage('Test') {
steps {
sh 'npm ci && npm test'
}
}
stage('Build') {
steps {
sh 'docker build -t app:${BUILD_NUMBER} .'
}
}
}
}
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