In early February numerous free and open source developers from around the
world traveled to Brussels, Belgium, for arguably the largest event of its
kind:
FOSDEM. Among the thousands of hackers in attendance
were a dozen or so Jenkins contributors. We have attended the event in the
past, but this year we had a blizzard of activity spanning four days around the FOSDEM
weekend.
Figure 1. City Hall, photo by Kohsuke Kawaguchi
One of our "accidental traditions" has become a
happy hour
the Friday night before FOSDEM truly begins at Cafe Le Roy d’Espagne on Grand
Place right in the middle of Brussels. Conveniently located a few hundred meters away from the
FOSDEM Beer Event
at Delirium Cafe, each year we are inevitably joined by friends from other open
source projects who know they’re welcome to join us for a few drinks.
Figure 2. Cafe Le Roy, photo by Kohsuke Kawaguchi
After dinner and drinks, a few of us decided it would be a good idea (it
wasn’t) to walk over to check out the FOSDEM Beer Event and maybe have just
one more beer. For the uninitiated, Belgian beers tend to be strong, as the FOSDEM organizers warn:
Unlike some other beers, Belgian beer is not just coloured water. Some beers
contain significant quantities of alcohol and will give you a pounding
hangover.
Unfortunately, some of us seem to re-learn this lesson each year at FOSDEM!
Bright and early the following day, FOSDEM really kicked off with keynotes and
the project tables lining a number of corridors.
Figure 3. A busy hall at FOSDEM, photo by Kohsuke Kawaguchi
At the Jenkins project’s table we typically spend two full days answering questions,
showing off the latest and greatest Jenkins features, and of course handing out
Jenkins stickers. The table is where many contributors, myself included, have
a rare opportunity to talk with dozens of enthusiastic Jenkins users from
across the broader open source community. This year we were very fortunate to have a
tremendous number of contributors available at the table to answer hundreds of
questions throughout the two days of FOSDEM.
I would like to thank everybody by name, but the entire weekend was such a blur
that I’m not sure I would be able to remember everybody who helped! We couldn’t have
had a successful event without their support, so many thanks to all the
contributors who helped!
In addition to the Jenkins project table, we had two contributors present in
the
Testing and Automation
devroom, which I helped organize in between answering Jenkins questions.
Declarative Pipelines in Jenkins
The first presentation was a stellar introduction to
Declarative Pipelines
in Jenkins, by long-time contributor and primary developer of Declarative
Pipeline support,
Andrew Bayer.
Using Containers for Building and Testing
Later in the day,
Carlos Sanchez,
another long-time contributor, maintainer of the
Kubernetes plugin and a number of Jenkins- and Maven-related
Docker containers, provided a great overview of the current state of using
containers for building and testing in Jenkins.
After a very busy two days at FOSDEM, a few contributors remained in Brussels
for a day-long
Post-FOSDEM Contributor Hackathon
sponsored by CloudBees, Inc. and
Betacowork Brussels. Trying to cram lots of
hacking into a single day is challenging, so the day was mostly filled with
discussions, some light prototyping, and a bit of recovery from the hectic
weekend at FOSDEM. :)
Figure 4. Daniel Beck presenting on CLI prototyping, photo by Kohsuke Kawaguchi
Thanks
Of course I would like to extend many thanks to all the contributors who
participated in the various FOSDEM related events, but I would call special
attention to the logistics and planning work done by contributors Alyssa Tong,
Damien Duportal, and Olivier Vernin. Thanks to their work coordinating all the
plans, reservations, and schedules, we had a flawless weekend
of high-intensity Jenkins discussion, advocacy, and hacking.
I hope to see everybody back in Brussels next year for FOSDEM 2018!