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How to Get Started With Bamboo

by Terence WongJanuary 6th, 2023

Too Long; Didn't Read

Continuous Integration (CI) servers are an important part of the CI/CD process. CI servers take a code repository, build it, and push it to a central location where a Continuous Delivery (CD) tool like Octopus can take over and manage deployments. Bamboo is a CI server developed by Atlassian that automates the building and testing of software applications.

featured image - How to Get Started With Bamboo

Bamboo is a CI server developed by Atlassian that automates the building and testing of software applications. If you're beginning your CI/CD journey, it's helpful to begin with a simple use case, with a visible result.

In this post, I show you how to build and push a software artifact where Octopus can take over and deploy it to a target environment.

You learn how to:

Install Bamboo on a Windows Server
Configure a Bamboo project
Configure a Bamboo plan to build and push a Docker container to a container registry
Run and view the container image

Getting set up

To follow this post, you need the following software and accounts:

Java 8 or 11
Docker
Git
GitHub account
DockerHub account

Installing Bamboo on a Windows server

To install Bamboo:

Sign up for a free trial which gives you an activation key
Run the install executable
Set the install location to a directory you can access, such as C:\Users\Username\Documents (note that setting it to the default location of C:\Program files may result in permission errors)
Set the Bamboo home directory, and make sure this is a separate directory from the install location with a folder name Bamboo-home

After the install finishes, run the Bamboo server:

Open terminal and navigate to the Bamboo installation directory
Run bin\start-bamboo.bat
The server should be started at http://localhost:8085/

Setting up users

In the start-up screen, you're asked to set up an admin account. Fill out the details and store the details in a password manager. If you misplace your password, you need to run through a recovery process.

Agents

Agents are the Workers that execute workloads in Bamboo. Because you installed the pre-requisite technology, you can use the local machine as an agent for testing purposes.

To set up a local agent:

In the Bamboo dashboard, go to the settings icon and select Agents
Go to Add local agent and give it a name
Click Add

Setting up the project and plan

Bamboo organizes your workflow into projects and plans. A project can contain multiple plans and each plan is a process that executes a series of tasks.

To get started, set up your first project and plan:

In the home menu, select Create and then Create Plan
Fill out the name of your project and plan

On the next screen, check the box that says Link new repository.

Connect to the Octopus underwater app repository

This post uses the Octopus underwater app.

To use this repository:

Fork it into your own GitHub account
In the password settings of GitHub, use a personal access token to grant Bamboo access to repositories under your GitHub account
Select the main branch
Test the connection to make sure Bamboo connects to this repository
Click Save and continue

Configuring the job

On the Configure Job screen, configure the tasks that the plan runs to execute your job. Bamboo provides a suite of task steps you can select from. These tasks execute a certain step in the CI pathway, such as checkout, build, pull, push.

There's a source code checkout task pre-filled for you. This checks out the linked GitHub repository into Bamboo.

Leave the isolated build as Agent environment. This uses the local agent you set up earlier.

First, add the Build Docker task:

Click Add Task and search for Docker
Set the command to Build a Docker Image
Set the repository to be [Your DockerHub Username]/[The tag of your image]
Check Use an existing Dockerfile located in context path
Click Save

Now, add the Push Docker task:

Click on Add task and search for Docker
Set the command to Push a Docker Image
Set the repository to be [Your DockerHub Username]/[The tag of your image]
Check Use the agent's native credentials
Click Save
Click Create

The plan starts to execute by checking out the code, building the Docker image, and pushing the built image to DockerHub

After it's complete, you see a green tick box to indicate the plan completed successfully.

Navigate to your DockerHub account to confirm the image has been pushed to the repository.

Deploy step

Now the image is on DockerHub, any CD tool can deploy it locally or to a cloud platform. We have guides explaining how to do this for:

To view the application locally:

docker pull [Your DockerHub Username]/[The tag of your image]
docker run -p 8080:8080 [Your DockerHub Username]/[The tag of your image]
Go to http://localhost:8080/

Conclusion

CI servers are an important part of the CI/CD process, and you can use many different CI servers to complete your deployments. Bamboo by Atlassian lets you build and push Docker images to Docker repositories.

In this post, you learned how to install Bamboo and set up a project. This is a simple example to get started, but there are many more ways to use Bamboo.

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