Part 7: Control Jenkins Pipeline through GitHub

Jenkins CI/CD Series

Part	Article
1	Install Jenkins with Docker
2	Creating Your First Jenkins Pipeline
3	Jenkins SSH Remote Execution
4	Automating MySQL Backup to AWS S3
5	Making Jenkins Automation Scalable
6	Running Ansible from Jenkins
7	Jenkins Pipeline from GitHub
8	Multibranch Pipelines
9	Parameterized Pipelines
10	Environment Variables in Pipelines

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Goal

Configure Jenkins to use a Jenkinsfile stored in a GitHub repository, enabling pipelines to be version-controlled, automatically updated, and executed directly from source code.

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Purpose

The purpose of this part is to introduce Pipeline as Code using GitHub, which is a core DevOps practice.

By the end of this setup, you will:

• Store Jenkins pipeline logic inside GitHub

• Configure Jenkins to pull pipeline code from SCM

• Automatically detect changes in the repository

• Build pipelines that are version-controlled and reusable

This approach ensures that your CI/CD pipelines are:

• Traceable (tracked via Git commits)

• Collaborative (teams can contribute)

• Consistent (same pipeline across environments)

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Prerequisites

Before starting this part, ensure you have:

• Ready to use Host and the directory structure to run Dockerfiles and docker-compose.yml (Refer to Part 1)

• A GitHub account

• Access to a demo-app repository (fork or create)

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Step-by-step implementation

• Jenkinsfile is placed at the location below in the repo, and will be used

• Create a new Job maven-github-pipeline

• Select options as below

Definition: Pipeline script from SCM
SCM: Git
Repository URL : Forked repo HTTP URL
Branch Specifier (blank for 'any'): */main
Script Path: jenkins/Jenkinsfile

Build now

• Go through the console output logs

• Build now one more time, and go to Jobs Console output and compare

This is not cloning the repo again; instead, it's checking if there are any latest commits and changes

Done!!!

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Conclusion

In this part, you successfully moved your Jenkins pipeline to GitHub, adopting the powerful concept of Pipeline as Code.

You have:

• Connected Jenkins to a GitHub repository

• Configured pipeline jobs to fetch the Jenkinsfile from SCM

• Executed builds directly from the repository code

• Observed how Jenkins detects changes without re-cloning

• Introduced version-controlled CI/CD workflows

This is a critical step toward modern DevOps practices, where pipelines are no longer managed manually in Jenkins but are fully integrated with source control systems.

With this setup, your pipeline becomes:

• Scalable

• Maintainable

• Production-ready

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🔗 Continue the Series

⬅️ Previous Article: Part 6 Running Ansible from Jenkins
➡️ Next Article: Part 8 Multibranch Pipelines

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⭐ If you found this article useful, follow https://ask-abhi.com for more DevOps tutorials.

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