Trigger failure in Jenkins, when anything in a python script fail

Question

I have a python script running in the build phase of Jenkins, in the execute shell area.

The problem is that if the script fail, I still see the build as successful. I did check and python use something similar to the return code for a shell command (the one you call with $?), although I can't figure out where to put the call to have "any" failure in the python script to trigger that return code

import sys

..... code here

....functions

sys.exit(-1)

I need to return sys.exit(-1), but where do you put it in the python code? So far I can only handle it using try blocks, and in the exception part I put the sys.exit(-1), but this add a lots of code, since I have a lots of functions in the script.

Is there a global location that I can use, to trigger the failure, so the Jenkins job fail?

Answer 1

def main():
    try:
        do_the_work()
        sys.exit(0) # success
    except:
        # insert code to log and debug the problem
        sys.exit(-1)

In words: if do_the_work returns, sys.exit(0). If do_the_work raises any exception which it does not itself handle, sys.exit(-1). Inside do_the_work, do not return except on success. raise an exception on any unrecoverable error state, for example

class DoSomethingError( exception)
...

ok = do_something()
if not ok:
    print ("do_something error return")
    raise DoSomethingError

Logging and debugging: search stack overflow for python answers concerning how to obtain and log an error traceback from a caught exception.