Learn how to use Jenkins X to automate your pipeline and achieve CI/CD.

DevOps for Developers

Jenkins X is a powerful tool for providing software developers continuous integration, automated testing, and continuous delivery, known as CI/CD, in Kubernetes.

It’s no secret that Kubernetes is extremely complex, and Jenkins X helps you by simplifying processes into concepts that can be adopted quickly and without spending months trying to figure out “the right way to do stuff.”

In this course, you’ll start by exploring the inner workings of Jenkins X and how to create a cluster using it. You’ll then learn how to combine Jenkins X with tools you’re already using. Throughout, you’ll see how this exciting new tool changes how you work with Kubernetes.

By the time you’re done, you will be confident managing CI/CD using Jenkins X in a Kubernetes cluster.

Jenkins X with Kubernetes

We saw that we could work with local files and let **ksync** synchronize them with DevPod. That allows us to work with our favorite IDE while reaping the benefits of having a full environment somewhere else. But that's not all; we can integrate IDEs with Jenkins X.

**Do you remember the screenshot from the beginning of the chapter?** That was the Visual Studio Code setup I used when working on the examples in this course. It's repeated below in case you're forgetful and you do not want to go back to see it again.

Let's see if we can configure it in the same way on your laptop.

> 🔍 I'll show you how to integrate Visual Studio Code with Jenkins X. If you prefer IntelliJ instead, the steps are very similar and I hope you will not have trouble setting it up. On the other hand, if you do not like either of the two, you're in tough luck since those are the only ones supported so far . Nevertheless, I strongly recommend Visual Studio Code, and I urge you to try it out. It is my favorite and, in my opinion, it is superior to any other IDE.

> ⚠️ I could not configure the Jenkins X extension to Visual Studio Code to work with EKS. As far as I know, there is no place where we can define the environment variables required for authentication. Truth be told, I didn't try too hard since I tend to work with GKE most of the time. Let me know if you solve that issue.

# Integrating the Visual Studio Code with Jenkins X
If you don't already use Visual Studio Code, but you do want to try it out, please download it and install it from the [official site](https://code.visualstudio.com/). 

With Visual Studio Code up-and-running, navigate to *File* > *Open*, select the *go-demo-6* directory, and click the *Open* button.

Next, we need to install the *jx* extension. To do that, go to *View* > *Extensions*, search for *jx*, click the *Install* button in *jx-tools*. Once it is installed, click the *Reload* button.

Now that the extension is installed, we can display some useful information opening *View* > *Explorer*, and expanding the *JENKINS X* tab.

You will see a few general options by clicking the *...* button. Feel free to explore them.

More interesting information is available in the *Pipelines* section. Inside it should be your user; expand it, and you'll see *go-demo-6*, with the *master* branch inside. Inside the master branch, you should see the builds executed for that project. If you expand one of them, you should notice the same steps as those we see when we execute `jx get activity` command. Some of them provide additional actions by clicking the right mouse button or two-finger click on Mac. They should be self-explanatory, so I'll let you explore them on your own.

Finally, I would typically open a terminal session inside Visual Studio Code. You can do that by opening *View* > *Integrated Terminal*. Inside that terminal, I would execute the command that would create a DevPod for that project.

Now you have everything in one place. You can write your Code and see the Jenkins X activities as well as the output of `watch.sh` running in a DevPod. Isn't that awesome?

Before we proceed, we'll go out of the `go-demo-6` directory.



This lesson explains how we can integrate IDEs with Jenkins X.

Integrating IDEs with Jenkins X