Automate Spring Boot Deployment with Jenkins and Docker: A Step‑by‑Step Guide

This article provides a comprehensive, step‑by‑step guide to implementing a one‑click automatic deployment pipeline for a Spring Boot project using Jenkins, Docker, and Maven on a CentOS 7 host.

Install Docker

Ensure yum packages are up to date.

Remove any old Docker versions.

Install required utilities.

Add the Docker CE repository.

Install Docker CE (stable version).

Start Docker and enable it to start on boot.

Verify the installation.

yum update

yum remove docker docker-common docker-selinux docker-engine

yum install -y yum-utils device-mapper-persistent-data lvm2

yum-config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo

yum install docker-ce

systemctl start docker
systemctl enable docker

docker version

Install Jenkins

Run Jenkins in a Docker container, exposing port 8080 and mounting the Jenkins home directory.

docker run --name jenkins -u root --rm -d -p 8080:8080 -p 50000:50000 -v /var/jenkins_home:/var/jenkins_home -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock jenkinsci/blueocean

Access Jenkins at http://{JENKINS_HOST_IP}:8080, retrieve the initial admin password, and complete the setup wizard.

docker exec -it jenkins bash
cat /var/lib/jenkins/secrets/initialAdminPassword

System Configuration

Install required plugins: Maven Integration, Publish Over SSH (optional), Gitee (if using Gitee), etc.

Configure Maven under Global Tool Configuration .

Create Jenkins Job

Create a new freestyle project.

Configure source code management with Git and provide repository URL and credentials.

Add a build trigger as needed.

Add a build step to invoke Maven with the goal clean install -Dmaven.test.skip=true.

Save the job.

clean install -Dmaven.test.skip=true

Test Build

Trigger the build, monitor the console output, and ensure the JAR is produced successfully.

Run the Project

Create a Dockerfile in the Spring Boot project root:

FROM jdk:8
VOLUME /tmp
ADD target/zx-order-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar app.jar
EXPOSE 8888
ENTRYPOINT ["bash","-c","java -jar /app.jar --spring.profiles.active=prd"]

Update the Jenkins job to build the Docker image and run the container:

-t: specify new image name
.: Dockerfile location
cd /var/jenkins_home/workspace/zx-order-api
docker stop zx-order || true
docker rm zx-order || true
docker rmi zx-order || true
docker build -t zx-order .
docker run -d -p 8888:8888 --name zx-order zx-order:latest

Note: Avoid using docker logs -f in the build step as it blocks the job.

Verification

Check running containers: docker ps View container logs: docker logs zx-order Access the application in a browser at http://{HOST_IP}:8888.

All steps together provide a reproducible CI/CD workflow for Spring Boot applications using Jenkins and Docker.