Best Practices for Scripted Pipelines

In this lesson, we’ll cover essential recommendations to optimize your Jenkins pipelines—both scripted and declarative—and then dive into guidelines that apply specifically to scripted pipelines. Following these practices will improve performance, maintainability, and reliability across your CI/CD workflows.

Note

These general best practices apply to both Scripted and Declarative Pipelines in Jenkins.

General Best Practices

Best Practice	Benefit	Implementation Example
Efficient Log Management	Reduces controller load and speeds up runs	Write build logs to a file on the agent, then compress and archive them as build artifacts via `archiveArtifacts`
Leverage Jenkins Plugins	Simplifies maintenance and updates	Use plugins for SCM, artifact handling, deployment, and notifications instead of custom scripts
Keep Pipelines Concise	Easier to read, debug, and maintain	Aim for fewer than 300 steps. Consolidate related commands into external helper scripts or tools
Use Command-Line Tools	Faster data processing	Offload heavy transformations or API calls to shell scripts, batch files, or CLI utilities like `curl` or `aws` CLI
Delegate to Agents	Keeps controller responsive	Schedule large data processing or long-running tasks on dedicated agent nodes
Minimize In-Pipeline Logic	Maintains pipeline “glue”	Avoid embedding complex Groovy expressions—use pipeline steps and external scripts for business logic

Scripted Pipeline–Specific Guidelines

Stick to Basic Groovy Syntax
Use only core Groovy features (loops, conditionals, closures). Avoid DSL meta-programming or AST transformations that make debugging difficult.
Avoid Direct Jenkins API Calls
Warning
Do not invoke Jenkins internal APIs (e.g., hudson.model.*) from your Jenkinsfile.
For advanced integration, develop a custom Pipeline Step Plugin instead.
Prefer CLI Parsers Over Groovy Libraries
For XML/JSON manipulation, use tools like xmllint or jq rather than in-pipeline Groovy parsing to reduce controller memory usage.
Don’t Perform Raw Network or I/O Operations
Warning
Never fetch URLs or read/write files directly in your Jenkinsfile.
Wrap these operations in sh, bat, or custom steps to ensure proper error handling and resource cleanup.

The image is a slide titled "Pipelines – Best Practices," listing best practices such as efficient log management and leveraging Jenkins plugins, alongside practices to avoid like complex Groovy features and network calls.

Best Practices for Scripted Pipelines

General Best Practices

Scripted Pipeline–Specific Guidelines

References

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