```html Jenkins CI/CD for .NET – MSDN Community

Getting Started with Jenkins CI/CD for .NET Projects

Posted by Jane Doe • Sep 10, 2025 • .NET CI/CD

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) are essential for modern .NET development. Jenkins, a popular open‑source automation server, can be tailored to build, test, and deploy .NET applications across Windows, Linux, and macOS agents.

Prerequisites

  • Jenkins server (latest LTS)
  • .NET SDK (6.0 or later) installed on the build agent
  • Git repository with your solution

Step‑by‑Step Setup

  1. Install required plugins: 
    Jenkins → Manage Jenkins → Manage Plugins → Available
- Git plugin
- MSBuild plugin
- Pipeline
- Azure Credentials (if deploying to Azure)
  2. Create a new Pipeline job and configure the SCM:
    3. pipeline {
    agent any
    stages {
        stage('Checkout') {
            steps {
                git url: 'https://github.com/yourorg/yourproject.git', branch: 'main'
            }
        }
        stage('Restore') {
            steps {
                bat 'dotnet restore'
            }
        }
        stage('Build') {
            steps {
                bat 'dotnet build --configuration Release'
            }
        }
        stage('Test') {
            steps {
                bat 'dotnet test --no-build --configuration Release'
            }
        }
        stage('Publish') {
            steps {
                bat 'dotnet publish -c Release -o ./publish'
            }
        }
        stage('Deploy') {
            steps {
                // Example: Deploy to Azure App Service
                azureWebAppPublish credentialsId: 'azure-cred', resourceGroup: 'RG', appName: 'myapp', 
                                  srcPath: 'publish/**'
            }
        }
    }
}
  3. Configure environment variables for secure secrets (e.g., AZURE_CLIENT_ID, AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET) via Credentials and reference them in the pipeline.
  4. Run the pipeline and verify that all stages succeed.

Tips & Tricks

  • Use dotnet clean to ensure a fresh build.
  • Parallelize unit test execution with dotnet test --parallel.
  • Cache NuGet packages on the agent to speed up builds.

Related Topics

Azure DevOps Pipelines for .NET
GitHub Actions for .NET
Jenkins .NET Plugins Overview
Dockerizing .NET Applications
CI/CD Best Practices
PowerShell Automation Scripts

Comments (3)

Mike L.
Sep 9, 2025 at 14:32
Great starter guide! I’d also recommend using the dotnet-sonarscanner for static analysis.
Sofia R.
Sep 9, 2025 at 10:07
Can this pipeline be used for .NET 8 preview builds? Any tweaks needed?
Alex K.
Sep 8, 2025 at 18:45
Remember to enable the “Allow script to be run” policy on Windows agents.
```