JX

JX is a command line tool for installing and using Jenkins X.

Installing

Check out how to install jx.

Getting Started

Please check out the Getting Started Guide on how to:

• create new Kubernetes clusters with Jenkins X
• install Jenkins X on existing Kubernetes clusters

Then what to do next when you have Jenkins X installed.

Welcome to the Jenkins X Community

We value respect and inclusiveness and follow the CDF Code of Conduct in all interactions.

We’d love to talk with you about Jenkins X and are happy to help if you have any questions.

Talk to us on our slack channels, which are part of the Kubernetes slack. Join Kubernetes slack here and find us on our channels:

• #jenkins-x-user for users of Jenkins X

• #jenkins-x-dev for developers of Jenkins X

Find out more about our bi-weekly office hours, where we discuss all things Jenkins X, and other events here.

Getting Help

To find out the available commands type:

jx

Or to get help on a specific command, say, create then type:

jx help create

You can also browse the jx command reference documentation.

Reference

• Command Line Reference

Opening Consoles

To open a console for foo:

jx open foo

If you do not know the name:

jx open

Tail logs

To tail the logs of anything running on Kubernetes (jenkins or your own applications) type.

jx logs

Which prompts you for the deployment to log then tails the logs of the newest pod for an app.

You can filter the list of deployments via:

jx logs -f cheese

Then if there's only one deployment with a name that contains cheese then it'll tail the logs of the latest pod or will prompt you to choose the exact deployment to use.

Remote shells

You can open a remote shell inside any pods container via the rsh command:

jx rsh

Or to open a shell inside a pod named foo:

jx rsh foo

Pass -c to specify the container name. e.g. to open a shell in a maven build pod:

jx rsh -c maven maven

Importing or Creating apps

To import an application from the current directory:

jx import

Or to create a new Spring Boot application from scratch:

jx create spring

e.g. to create a new WebMVC and Spring Boot Actuator microservice try this:

jx create spring -d web -d actuator

Starting builds

To start a pipeline using a specific name try:

jx start pipeline myorg/myrepo

Or to pick the pipeline to start:

jx start pipeline

If you know part of the name of the pipeline to run you can filter the list via:

jx start pipeline -f thingy

You can start and tail the build log via:

jx start pipeline -t

Viewing Apps and Environments

To view environments for a team:

jx get env

To view the application versions across environments:

jx get version

Manual promotions

Typically we setup Environments to use automatic promotion so that the CI / CD pipelines will automatically promote versions through the available Environments using the CI / CD Pipeline.

However if you wish to manually promote a version to an environment you can use the following command:

jx promote myapp -e prod 

Or if you wish to use a custom namespace:

jx promote myapp -n my-dummy-namespace

Switching Environments

The jx CLI tool uses the same Kubernetes cluster and namespace context as kubectl.

You can switch Environments via:

jx env

Or change it via:

jx env staging
jx env prod

To display the current environment without trying to change it:

jx env -b

To view all the environments type:

jx get env

You can create or edit environments too:

jx create env

jx edit env staging

You can switch namespaces in the same way via:

jx ns

or

jx ns awesome-staging    

Switching Clusters

If you have multiple Kubernetes clusters then you can switch between them via:

jx ctx

Note that changing the namespace ,environment or cluster changes the current context for ALL shells!

Sub shells

So if you want to work temporarily with, say, the production cluster we highly recommend you use a sub shell for that.

jx shell my-prod-context

Or to pick the context to use for the sub shell:

jx shell 

Then your bash prompt will be updated to reflect that you are in a different context and/or namespace. Any changes to the namespace, environment or context will be local to the current shell only!

Setting your prompt

You can use the jx prompt to configure your CLI prompt to display the current team and environment you are working within:

	# Enable the prompt for bash
	PS1="[\u@\h \W \$(jx prompt)]\$ "

	# Enable the prompt for zsh
	PROMPT='$(jx prompt)'$PROMPT

Note that the prompt is updated automatically for you via the jx shell command too.

Bash completion

On a Mac to enable bash completion try:

jx completion bash > ~/.jx/bash
source ~/.jx/bash   

Or try:

source <(jx completion bash)

For more help try:

jx help completion bash

Addons

We are adding a number of addon capabilities to Jenkins X. To add or remove addons use the jx create addon or jx delete addon commands.

For example to add the Gitea Git server to your Jenkins X installation try:

jx create addon gitea

This will:

• install the Gitea Helm chart.
• add Gitea as a Git server (via the jx create git server gitea command).
• create a new user in Gitea (via the jx create git user -n gitea command).
• create a new Git API token in Gitea (via the jx create git token -n gitea -p password username command).

Troubleshooting

We have tried to collate common issues here with work arounds. If your issue isn't listed here please let us know.

Other issues

Please let us know and see if we can help? Good luck!

Contributing

We welcome your contributions.

If you're looking to build from source or get started hacking on jx, please see the CONTRIBUTING.MD or our Contributing Guide on the Jenkins X website.

Get more details at codescene.io.