Legacy build environment in Docker container, incompatible with Jenkins agent

Question

I have a working Dockerfile that creates a build environment for a legacy app, and now I'd like to use that environment from Jenkins, ideally allowing for incremental builds.

The environment is too old to run a recent version of Java, which means it cannot be used as an agent directly.

Is there a way to run a series of build steps inside a container without the container itself running an agent?

Answer 1

According the the Jenkins docs, you could use your custom docker image as the execution environment, assuming the server Jenkins is running on has Docker installed/running.

pipeline {
    agent {
        docker { image 'your-custom-image' }
    }
    stages {
        stage('Build') {
            steps {
                sh 'commands to run in your docker image here'
            }
        }
    }
}