A complete guide to setting up your own Jenkins CI/CD pipeline to test, build, and containerize your projects using Docker.

I wanted a single place where all my projects could be tested and containerized automatically. So I built a self-hosted Jenkins pipeline on my homelab server.

Setup

• Installed Jenkins on a Docker container
• Installed plugins for GitHub, Docker, and pipelines
• Created a shared pipeline template for all projects

Pipeline Steps

1. Pull from GitHub
2. Run unit tests
3. Build JAR
4. Build Docker image
5. Push to registry
6. Trigger deployment (optional)

What I Gained

• Zero manual builds
• Consistent pipelines for all projects
• The confidence of real CI/CD experience

This became the backbone of my development workflow.