Detecting modified file list in a commit in Jenkins

Question

I have a project structure similar to the below. Each project has a descriptor file that mentions which version of the project should be deployed to the remote server. The project zips are already hosted in a nexus server.

➜  abc_env_descriptor git:(master) tree
.
├── abc_project1
│   └── descriptor.txt
├── abc_project2
│   └── descriptor.txt
└── abc_project3
    └── descriptor.txt

I will be maintaining these descriptor files in GitHub. If I make changes to these files via a commit, I want the configured Jenkins job to detect only the changed descriptor files and then pulling the project zip from the relevant nexus repo and apply it to the remote server. Are there any plugins or example scripts for Jenkins that will help detect the changed files?

Answer 1

If you just want to see the list of files modified by the latest commit :

git diff --name-only HEAD^ HEAD

# if you only want files named 'descriptor.txt' :
git diff --name-only HEAD^ HEAD | grep "descriptor.txt"

---

If you want to list files modified with respect to the version in production, you have to choose a way to identify the commit that represents "the prduction version" :

• a prod/current tag in your repository
• a parameter to your Jenkins job
• an environment variable set correctly in your Jenkins job
• something on your remote servers that allows you to run curl <remoteserver> get_version or ssh <remoteserver> "cat current_version" from your Jenkins job
• etc ...

Once you have a way to identify that commit, replace HEAD^ with that commit :

git diff --name-only <prod version> HEAD
git diff --name-only <prod version> HEAD | grep "descriptor.txt"

Answer 2

Use Git Additional Behaviours and select the Polling ignores commits in certain paths from the drop-down list. And define your project path {i.e abc_project1/}. By this, If you make changes to this defined folder path {i.e abc_project1/}, Jenkins job will detect only the changed descriptor files and then pull the project zip from the relevant nexus repo and apply it to the remote server

In your case, you should make a parameterized job or conditional job{using conditional step plugins}, or separate job for project-specific to achieve this