# Handling Jenkins Pipeline Failures

Paul Tomoiu

●

Jenkins,

pipeline

●

Published 2022-12-03

This tutorial explains how the failures could be handled.

First of all I want to highlight that a prerequisite for this article is Create Declarative Pipeline tutorial.

Now we modify the Jenkinsfile in GitHub. The new Jenkinsfile will be like this:

pipeline {
    agent any

    stages {
        stage('Build') {
            steps {
                echo 'Building ...'
                bat "dir"
            }
        }
    }
    post {
        always {
            echo 'Always do this.'
        }
        success {
            echo 'Do this on success.'
        }
        failure {
            echo 'Do this on FAILURE.'
        }
    }
}

We run the job, and we will see the following in the Console Output:

[Pipeline] stage
[Pipeline] { (Build)
[Pipeline] echo
Building ...
[Pipeline] bat

C:\ProgramData\Jenkins\.jenkins\workspace\DeclarativePipeline>dir
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 82BA-7949

 Directory of C:\ProgramData\Jenkins\.jenkins\workspace\DeclarativePipeline

01/26/2023  11:28 PM    <DIR>          .
01/26/2023  11:28 PM    <DIR>          ..
01/26/2023  11:28 PM               414 Jenkinsfile
               1 File(s)            414 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  240,220,401,664 bytes free
[Pipeline] }
[Pipeline] // stage
[Pipeline] stage
[Pipeline] { (Declarative: Post Actions)
[Pipeline] echo
Always do this.
[Pipeline] echo
Do this on success.
[Pipeline] }
[Pipeline] // stage
[Pipeline] }
[Pipeline] // withEnv
[Pipeline] }
[Pipeline] // node
[Pipeline] End of Pipeline
Finished: SUCCESS

We modify Jenkinsfile, and instead bat "dir" we put sh "dir". This will make the pipeline fail.

We run the job again, and we will see the following in the Console Output:

[Pipeline] { (Build)
[Pipeline] echo
Building ...
[Pipeline] sh
[Pipeline] }
[Pipeline] // stage
[Pipeline] stage
[Pipeline] { (Declarative: Post Actions)
[Pipeline] echo
Always do this.
[Pipeline] echo
Do this on FAILURE.
[Pipeline] }
[Pipeline] // stage
[Pipeline] }
[Pipeline] // withEnv
[Pipeline] }
[Pipeline] // node
[Pipeline] End of Pipeline
java.io.IOException: CreateProcess error=2, The system cannot find the file specified
	at java.base/java.lang.ProcessImpl.create(Native Method)
	at java.base/java.lang.ProcessImpl.<init>(ProcessImpl.java:420)
	at java.base/java.lang.ProcessImpl.start(ProcessImpl.java:151)
	at java.base/java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(ProcessBuilder.java:1107)
	at java.base/java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(ProcessBuilder.java:1071)
	at hudson.Proc$LocalProc.<init>(Proc.java:254)
	at hudson.Proc$LocalProc.<init>(Proc.java:223)
	at hudson.Launcher$LocalLauncher.launch(Launcher.java:997)
....
	at jenkins.security.ImpersonatingExecutorService$1.run(ImpersonatingExecutorService.java:70)
	at java.base/java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:515)
	at java.base/java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:264)
	at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1128)
	at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:628)
	at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:834)
Finished: FAILURE

Info

Declarative Pipeline supports robust failure handling by default via its post section which allows declaring a number of different "post conditions" such as: always, unstable, success, failure, and changed.