Creating projects

To create or import projects you will need to get the jx 3.x binary and put it on your $PATH

Create a new project from a quickstart

To create a new project from a quickstart template use the jx project quickstart command:

jx project quickstart

Note that the old Jenkins X 2.x alias jx quickstart is still supported but will be deprecated eventually.

The quickstart files are all found in the quickstart github organization.

See the quickstart documentation for more information.

Import an existing project

To import an existing project use the jx project import command:

jx project import

The tasks which are copied over during the import process can be found here.

If you are using nested gitlab repositories (org/group/repository), add --nested-repo flag to jx project import.

NOTE that we recommend trying out a quickstart first before importing a project so that:

• you can verify your cluster is setup correctly so that you can create new charts + images, promote them to staging and create Preview Environments on Pull Requests etc.
• as you start to import projects which may have their own custom Dockerfile or custom charts you can compare your custom chart versus the charts included in the Jenkins X catalog to see how it works. e.g.
  • the way the default pipelines update the image tag on each release to use a versioned image in the helm chart or the
  • how the ingress domain URL is injected into the Ingress resource in the helm chart from the environment (preview / staging / production etc) so that the same chart can be deployed into any environment and things just work (with and without TLS)

For troubleshooting what could be wrong with quickstart/import, refer to this page

Default file layout

If you are importing your own repository which has a Dockerfile and/or a helm chart the default pipelines look for these files at:

• Dockerfile in the root directory of your repository
• charts/$repoName/Chart.yaml for the helm chart

You are free to use other conventions if you prefer; though you’ll need to modify the pipelines to look in different locations for these files.

Importing projects with Jenkinfiles

Note that Jenkins X 3.x includes new support for handling of importing Jenkinsfiles if you are trying to combine Jenkins and Tekton together in Jenkins X.

This means we can create quickstarts and import projects using the same UX whether you wish to use the automated CI/CD pipelines from Jenkins X using Tekton or wish to reuse your own existing Jenkinsfile files (or even a combination of both on the same repository!)

Top level wizard

If you just run the jx project you get a top level wizard that asks you which kind of approach you wish to take (e.g. quickstart versus import etc)

Improvements since v3

We’ve made a number of improvements over the 2.x version of jx import command:

• when importing to Jenkins X we ask which pipeline catalog you wish to use which you can now configure easily
• the wizard will prompt you for the pack name (language) once the detection has occurred. Usually the pack name detection is good enough. e.g. detecting maven but you may wish to change the version of the pack (e.g. maven-java11)
• when importing a project which has a Jenkinfiles you are given the choice to:
  • ignore the Jenkinsfile and let Jenkins X automate the CI/CD via Tekton
  • use a Jenkins server you have configured via Jenkins X to implement the CI
  • add a new Jenkins server for the CI managed via GitOps in Jenkins X
  • use the Jenkinfile Runner via Tekton

Changes since 2.x:

For those of you who know Jenkins X and have used jx import before the new project wizard is a little different:

• the commands are a little different:

  • jx create import is now jx project import
  • jx create quickstart is now jx project quickstart
  • jx create project is now jx project
  • jx create spring is now jx project spring

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