Installing Jenkins with Unity3D 2019 on Windows and make a first build, with GitHub and SSH

Aug 16, 2023

Installing Jenkins with Unity3D 2019 on Windows and make a first build, with GitHub and SSH

In this instructional video I am installing Jenkins on a Windows machine for use with Unity3D 2019, and make a simple pipeline Unity3D build with it. Further more I show you how to use GitHub+SSH with Jenkins.

Get the Unity3D buildscript here: https://gamefeelings.com/2020/02/18/j…

Edit 2021: If you need help, head over to my discord at https://discord.gg/UteZv8zJDt on the channel ‘game-dev-talk’.

If you want to spend less time building and fixing bugs you want to setup a build/test pipeline for your Unity3D projects. I did this with Jenkins because I liked to do this ‘low budget’ and ‘start small’.
Alternatives are Unity Cloud or Azure DevOps.
Edit: I have moved on to Azure DevOps myself, because the interface and self hosted stuff is way more easy to use and maintain (then Jenkins). I have also a video on this setup over on • How to set up an Azure DevOps Unity3D…

00:00 Install Jenkins
03:28 Customize Jenkins
04:42 Connect GitHub
07:13 Install a GIT client
09:00 Show Jenkins where to find Unity
09:45 Create a pipeline with a Unity build
12:30 Explanation of the build output
13:06 Unity build script details

Content

0.5 -> Lets start by downloading Jenkins for Windows.

4.16 -> I’m going to install Jenkins on my own development system.

7.94 -> It’s a lot easier to setup Unity 3D this way, but the downside is that I can’t access it when I’m not at home.

15.28 -> Jenkins is available for a lot of platforms, so if you ever want to migrate you can go

20.28 -> anywhere. As long as the Unity3D editor is allowed to run on that platform of course.

30.08 -> Jenkins will install a service on your machine that will stay available in the background.

34.16 -> This service then hosts a website that is the interface to your build automation.

39.94 -> As with other automation tools, it needs space to store and execute builds. I have changed

44.54 -> these paths to look at my data disks, if you ever wonder why that is.

49.2 -> Now we need to prove to the system we are the sys admin, for this purpose there is a

53.4 -> local file with the password in it. After we have proven to be the sys admin, we can

57.56 -> continue with the installation.

65.02 -> In this phase of the installation we can select the main components we need for Jenkins to

68.62 -> have. Don’t worry, you can change these later-on though the Jenkins config.

77.6 -> If you don’t know what you are doing, just add things only. And read the descriptive tags.

89.96 -> I know Jenkins is usable for many things, so I install the things that are likely to

93.94 -> me that I need them sometime in the future.

115 -> Here we need to select the GitHub source option, because this demo is also about enabling SSH

119.32 -> for a GitHub project.

135.48 -> I don’t know what I need for user management, but I do know I want it to be simple so just

140.86 -> role based authorization for me.

155.16 -> There is a lot of cool stuff available for Jenkins.

165.02 -> Well, I definitely want to be able to change the UI language because it will enable the

169.04 -> system language by default and, on my system that is Dutch.

182.98 -> Some waiting later and Jenkins is almost ready.

189.7 -> Ah, here I can create my own user with admin rights.

199.74 -> Remember this address, it is the interface url.

207.62 -> And lets start by changing the UI language to English.

229.32 -> Now I have to setup the Unity3D and Git plugins.

237.64 -> I go to ‘manage Jenkins’ and ‘manage plugins’.

244.28 -> GitHub integration is already installed, but I still need to get the Unity3D

258.78 -> The Unity3D plugin is an open source project over at GitHub. It is a bit dated and there

263.66 -> is also no good documentation for it. Hence this video tutorial. But it gets the job done.

271.94 -> I go to ‘manage Jenkins’ again but this time to ‘Tool configuration’.

278.28 -> Hmm, the git install isn’t looking well. Okay, lets fix something else first. I need

284.3 -> to add an SSH key to Jenkins and GitHub.

290.04 -> On the way to GitHub I admire my attempt at the GlobalGameJam 2020.

296.34 -> Lets move on. I go to my GitHub account to the settings. There is a tab here with SSH

301.58 -> and GPG keys, that’s the place to store my SSH key.

324.32 -> But I don’t have an SSH key yet, so lets generate one. For this I can just start the

330.36 -> command line and call a tool to make the required files.

333.54 -> You all probably have this tool on your system.

342.52 -> The generated file will be in the base of my profile, next to all folders like my documents.

347.12 -> Just press enter and the tool will do its work.

354.7 -> And here are my SSH keypair files. So I select the one starting with ssh-rsa and copy it

361.78 -> over to GitHub.

365.98 -> Done

367.22 -> Lets see… now I need to add the other part to Jenkins.

378.76 -> At Credentials I add a new account with the login type SSH key.

383.36 -> The benefit of SSH keys for me is that I can track the usage of these keys and easily revoke

387.74 -> permissions if I want to.

412.32 -> Names names and names…

414.44 -> And here I finally can add the private part of the SSH key.

430.14 -> Okay, with that done I can go back to the Git tool setup.

441.94 -> For sure it is not okay, because there is red text everywhere. Okey, I need to repair

446.68 -> the Git client. Apparently there is no client installed on this machine so I have to get one.

455.98 -> Just the default open source Git client for me.

485.86 -> And as with all cool tools, It wants to integrate with everything and has a lot of options to

491.48 -> configure. I’m feeling an kung fu admin already.

499.86 -> Notepad++ for sure.

526.68 -> Aaaand finally installing.

535.86 -> This will probably work fine, I’m going to ignore these red warnings from now on.

541.9 -> And now to configure Unity3D.

545.32 -> I have meditated 2 hours on how to get this working

548.6 -> (as you can see on the system clock)

550.34 -> and then suddenly It came to me.

552.02 -> Go to the Unity hub and to the installs section and there you can easily

555.06 -> find the paths of your Unity installations.

573.9 -> However pay attention when setting the paths. You need to point at the root folder,

578.78 -> so one above the Editor folder.

581.74 -> Aaand on the actual build pipeline.

589.86 -> Lets start with creating a simple project.

595.04 -> I am going to use one of my existing Unity3D codebases to hook it up to the automated build.

601.66 -> ‘Find the Gnome’ is an old multi-platform project of mine, so it is well suited for this purpose.

614.36 -> Okay, this is it. The build pipe.

616.66 -> I was fooled by the looks but don’t be, you can get magic done on this page.

621.6 -> Be sure to check the discard builds because otherwise your system will clutter up fast.

626.78 -> I am going to add an SSH coupling to my github project for this build.

646.94 -> And because of my branching strategy I have to point to the steam build.

652.48 -> I probably want to add automatic build triggers later on but

656.3 -> for now I am going to trigger the builds manually.

661.28 -> I definitely want to abort the build if it takes too long because this build will start

665.5 -> some Unity3D processes in the background that aren’t visible and if they hangup

669.38 -> I have no idea on what happened.

685.04 -> For help on the environment variables you can look over at the Jenkins website,

690.14 -> I for instance made a typo in the build name. Can you find it?

704.5 -> I did not know the build button can be used multiple times to chain build commands.

715.94 -> Lets start with adding a normal Unity3D build first.

726.7 -> The command line arguments to Unity3D are available over at the Unity website.

731.44 -> The main thing is a class you reference in which you can control what to do and

735.98 -> if Unity succeeded.

738.04 -> I will go into detail about this class after saving.

751.04 -> But first I will show you the actual building.

766.96 -> Okay, as you can see the output of Unity3D is visible in the background,

770.68 -> and in the folder you see a Windows build appearing.

777.88 -> On that specific build my script wasn’t fully working yet

780.6 -> so hence the .exe is missing on the executable.

787.28 -> This Is that Unity3D script I referenced.

789.98 -> The main thing you need to tell Unity3D is the scenes you want to build.

793.48 -> But you can add other instructions like pre-packaging and specific targets.

798.12 -> You could even do testing here and signal ‘failed’ when things don’t work out as planned.

804.04 -> You can find the script I used in the description

806.58 -> and some more sources on Unity3D builds with Jenkins there.

811.54 -> Thank you for watching and I wish you luck on your Unity3D with Jenkins project!

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdIG0af7S0g