ASP.Net Web Application Continuous Integration (CI) using Jenkins automation server: Basic Setup, Installation & Configuration

Recently, I get a chance to work on setting up Continuous Integration (CI) for ASP.Net projects using Jenkins (open source automation server).  My projects are using git version control system & git repositories are hosted on Bitbucket. I have previously worked on Visual Studio Team Services & Team City for Continuous Integration (CI). In this blog post, I will share my experience of setting up CI using Jenkins. 

In this blog post, we will see what all basic setups, installations & configurations we need to do before getting Jenkins up & running for building ASP.NET Web Application.

Note: You are currently on Part I of this series, do refer below parts for more details.

Part II: Starting & setting up Jenkins

Part III: Creating & Adding SSH key to Bitbucket

Part IV: Creating Jobs In Jenkins: Getting source code from Bitbucket hosted git repository, polling the SCM to check whether changes were made, restore Nuget packages, build project using MSBuild, publish and archive the build

A. Download & Install

I. Java SE Runtime Environment
https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre8-downloads-2133155.html (Java SE Runtime Environment 8u201)

II. Git Client
https://git-scm.com/downloads (2.21.0)

III. Build Tools for Visual Studio
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/ (Visual Studio 2019)

Select -> Web Development Build Tools 

IV. Apache Tomcat®
Download & Unzip (to any location of your choice) – My location: “I:\Jenkins\apache-tomcat-9.0.17“
https://tomcat.apache.org/download-90.cgi (9.0.17)

V. Jenkins
Download & Paste to Apache Tomcat®’s “webapps” folder – My “webapps” folder location: “I:\Jenkins\apache-tomcat-9.0.17\webapps”
https://jenkins.io/download/ (Jenkins 2.164.1)

VI. NuGet
Download & Paste to any location of your choice – My location: “I:\Jenkins\tools“
https://www.nuget.org/downloads (v4.9.4)

B. Add system environment variables

JRE_HOME

C. Edit “Path” system environment variables

Add paths for: git.exe & nuget.exe

Next: Starting & setting up Jenkins