Jenkins error handling between scripted and declarative pipelines

Question

I'd like to build a number of declarative pipeline jobs from a scripted pipeline, and handle any failures with individual try/catch blocks nested within a parent try/catch

node {
    def err = false
    try{
        stage('build image') {
            try {
                //this job is a declarative pipeline
                build job: 'build-docker-image' 
            } catch(e) {
                echo "failure at build-docker-image"
                throw e
            }
        }
        stage('deploy image') {
            try {
                //this job is a declarative pipeline
                build job: 'deploy-docker-image' 
            } catch(e) {
                echo "failure at deploy-docker-image"
                throw e
            }
        }
    } catch(e) {
        err = true
        echo "caught error ${e}"
    }
    if(!err) {
        echo "build and deploy ran successfully"
    }
}

This code behaves inconsistently. If the build job fails for syntactical reasons, the error is caught by the child try/catch and echos the error message, then throws it to the parent, which also catches it and echos the error itself. But if the build job fails for less explicit reasons, i.e. the image isn't compiled correctly, the parent try/catch will still catch the error and behave the same as the previous example, but the child try/catch will not catch the error, and will not echo its failure message.

Why the discrepancy? Are there some errors caused by a failed declarative pipeline job that a try/catch block would not catch? Is it bad practice to mix scripted and declarative pipelines? I would be grateful for any advice or insight regarding this. Thank you

Alin Soare Alin Soare · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-08T10:38:00

You are using same variable to catch error in try..catch loops. Try this one:

    def err = false
    try{
        stage('build image') {
            try {
                //this job is a declarative pipeline
                build job: 'build-docker-image' 
            } catch(e) {
                echo "failure at build-docker-image"
                throw e
            }
        }
        stage('deploy image') {
            try {
                //this job is a declarative pipeline
                build job: 'deploy-docker-image' 
            } catch(e) {
                echo "failure at deploy-docker-image"
                throw e
            }
        }
    } catch(error) {
        err = true
        echo "caught error ${error}"
    }
    if(!err) {
        echo "build and deploy ran successfully"
    }
}```

Jenkins error handling between scripted and declarative pipelines

1 Answers