JPL Jenkins & Python to ModelCenter Desktop Example

Examples of how to call a ModelCenter Desktop workflow (.pxcz) from a Python script and from a Jenkins build stage.

Assumptions:

• Default install of Python at C:\Python27
• Append the location of python.exe to the Path environment variable (e.g., C:\Python27)
• Python comtypes package installed (see below for instructions)
• Python pyinstaller package installed (see below for instructions)
• Read/Write/Execute access to Python install directory
• Default install of ModelCenter Desktop

Instructions for installing comtypes and/or pyinstaller using pip:

• On command line enter: C:\Python27\Scripts\pip.exe install comtypes
• On command line enter: C:\Python27\Scripts\pip.exe install pyinstaller

Also note that when the ModelCenter workflow example.pxcz runs it appends the date and time to a log.txt file in the path C:\Users\Public\Documents\JPL Python MC Example\log.txt, which is specified inside the workflow. The purpose of this log file is to verify that the workflow executed.

Python Calling ModelCenter Desktop

Instructions for Python wrapping ModelCenter Desktop to run a workflow:

• Open Command Prompt
• CD to directory with example.py and example.pxcz files.
• Run example.py on command line interface
• See below for example output:

• Review example.py for seeing how the Python code gets and sets variables in a ModelCenter Desktop workflow.

Jenkins Calling ModelCenter Desktop

Instructions for setting up and running a ModelCenter workflow from Jenkins:

Example Setup Information

• The Jenkins Master|head node was setup on a Linux|Debian node using https://bitnami.com/stack/jenkins/virtual-machine OVA VM.
• A Jenkins agent|slave was setup on a Windows machine with ModelCenter Desktop installed, with the Jenkins label MCD (this label is used in the Jenkins Pipeline script below).

Creating runMCD.exe

• Open Command Prompt
• CD to directory with runMCD.py file.
• Run pyinstaller -F runMCD.py
• Find runMCD.exe in dist folder.

Creating Jenkins Stage

• Put runMCD.exe and example.pxcz in a directory accessible by Jenkins (e.g., C:\Users\Public\Documents\JPL Python MC Example\) on the MCD Jenkins agent|slave
• Create a Jenkins pipeline job using Pipeline script (see image below)
• Include the following in the script field:

node (label: 'MCD') {
	stage('Build') {
		bat(/"C:\Users\Public\Documents\JPL Python MC Example\runMCD.exe" "C:\Users\Public\Documents\JPL Python MC Example\example.pxcz" /)
		bat(/echo %DATE% %TIME%/)
	}
}

• In the Pipeline script, ensure that the path for runMCD.exe and the .pxcz file are updated to reflect their location on the Jenkins agent

• See below for image of Pipeline definition:

Jenkins Results

• After running the job the expected Blue Ocean result would look like the following: