Continuous Integration with GitHub Pull Requests

When a new pull request is opened in the project and the author of the pull request is not a member of the RobotLocomotion GitHub organization, the Jenkins GitHub Pull Request Builder @drake-jenkins-bot will not automatically schedule builds.

To allow the pull request to be tested, a member of the RobotLocomotion organization may comment:

  • @drake-jenkins-bot ok to test to accept this pull request for testing.
  • @drake-jenkins-bot test this please for a one time test run.

If the build fails for other various reasons you can rebuild:

  • @drake-jenkins-bot retest this please to start a new build.

You can also view the Jenkins UI directly.

Rebuilding via Reviewable

When posting a @drake-jenkins-bot ... please comment in Reviewable, never use the large green “Publish” button in the upper right corner.

Instead, write the bot comment in the “Review discussion” box immediately below the “File Matrix” widget and use the “single message send” button to post it, in the lower-right corner of the “Review discussion” box.

Jenkins Bot Reviewable Comment

(For details, see Reviewable#576.)

Scheduling an On-Demand Build

There are a number of Jenkins builds that do not normally run pre-merge, but do run post-merge or nightly. These builds include lower-priority platforms (e.g., macOS), and specialized options (e.g., UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer). Members of the RobotLocomotion organization can manually schedule these builds on pull requests that have not yet been merged, or on arbitrary commits in the RobotLocomotion/drake repository.

To schedule a build of an open pull request merged with master, comment:

  • @drake-jenkins-bot <job-name> please

where <job-name> is the name of an experimental job.

For example:

  • @drake-jenkins-bot mac-arm-sonoma-clang-bazel-experimental-release please
  • @drake-jenkins-bot linux-noble-clang-bazel-experimental-valgrind-memcheck please

A list of Jenkins bot commands for experimental builds that covers the full set of continuous and nightly production jobs is available here. Both provisioned and unprovisioned jobs are listed.

Scheduling Builds via the Jenkins User Interface

Alternatively, to schedule a build of an open pull request in the RobotLocomotion/drake repository:

  1. Log in to Jenkins using GitHub OAuth. (Make sure that you see your name the upper-right corner, not the words “Log in”.)
  2. Go to the list of experimental builds.
  3. Click on the specific build you want to schedule.
  4. Click on “Pull Requests” towards the top, and select your pull request.
  5. Click on “Build with Parameters” in the left menu.
  6. (Optional) If you need to test your changes alongside a pull request or branch of the RobotLocomotion/drake-ci repository, enter pr/XYZ/head (HEAD of pull request), pr/XYZ/merge (pull request merged with master) for ciSha. Otherwise, leave it set to “main.”
  7. Click Build.

The list of experimental builds includes builds that automatically run on opened and updated pull requests, as well as numerous other builds for on-demand use. To help identify the on-demand build you want to run, you can consult the lists of continuous, and nightly but you should not schedule continuous or nightly builds directly.

Updating Installation Prerequisites

Installation prerequisites are packages that are not pulled in Bazel, but instead installed on the OS itself using a package manager like apt, Homebrew, or pip (only on Mac). They are installed via the scripts under setup/, and are split between binary_distribution (dependencies that are necessary for binary installation) and source_distribution (dependencies, in addition to those in binary_distribution, necessary for source installation). Since source_distribution will also install prerequisites in binary_distribution, you do not need to duplicate binary prerequisites in source_distribution.

Prerequisites of the source_distribution are further split into three parts: those that are needed for building and running the //:install target using bazel (bazel run //:install), those additional dependencies for building and running tests (bazel test ...), and those additional dependencies for running select maintainer scripts (e.g., mirror_to_s3.py and new_release.py). Again, it is expected that a given prerequisite will only appear in one of these lists.

When updating prerequisites with these scripts, the normal experimental CI will most likely fail. To test new prerequisites on Linux, you should request unprovisioned experimental builds. A list of Jenkins bot commands for experimental unprovisioned builds that covers the full set of corresponding continuous and nightly production jobs (including provisioned) is available here.

Testing changes to the source distribution prerequisites for macOS is a work in progress as there are no longer unprovisioned builds. Contact @BetsyMcPhail for guidance on testing these changes.

After this has passed, go through normal review. Once normal review is done, add @BetsyMcPhail for review and request that the provisioned instances be updated. She will then respond on when it is appropriate to merge the PR.

Building Packages on Demand

Binary or Debian

To schedule an “experimental” build of a binary package or debian package, comment on an open pull request using one or more of these commands:

  • @drake-jenkins-bot linux-noble-unprovisioned-gcc-cmake-experimental-packaging please
  • @drake-jenkins-bot mac-arm-sonoma-clang-cmake-experimental-packaging please

or follow the instructions above to schedule a build of one of the Packaging jobs with experimental in its name.

To download the built package, open the Jenkins console log for the completed build (click on “Details” for a packaging build in the pull request’s list of checks, then “Console Output”) and search for the text “Artifacts uploaded to AWS” to find the download URL (usually about a screen’s-worth of text above the end of the log). For example:

...
[2:30:23 PM]  -- Artifacts uploaded to AWS:
[2:30:23 PM]  https://drake-packages.csail.mit.edu/drake/experimental/drake-0.0.20250530.180720%2Bgit3468349f-noble.tar.gz
[2:30:23 PM]  https://drake-packages.csail.mit.edu/drake/experimental/drake-dev_0.0.20250530.180720%2Bgit3468349f-1_amd64-noble.deb
...

(In some cases, it may be necessary to click the “Full Log” and search for the text “Upload complete”, particularly if you wish to also find the checksum URLs.)

To download the package, simply click the link or use your favorite HTTP retrieval tool (e.g. wget or curl).

Wheel

To schedule an “experimental” build of a wheel package, comment on an open pull request using one or more of these commands:

  • @drake-jenkins-bot linux-noble-unprovisioned-gcc-wheel-experimental-release please
  • @drake-jenkins-bot mac-arm-sonoma-clang-wheel-experimental-release please

or follow the instructions above to schedule a build of one of the Wheel jobs with experimental in its name.

To download or install the built wheel, open the Jenkins console log for the completed build (click on “Details” for a wheel build in the pull request’s list of checks, then “Console Output”) and search for the text “Artifacts uploaded to AWS” to find the download URL (usually about a screen’s-worth of text above the end of the log). For example:

...
[2:17:49 PM]  -- Artifacts uploaded to AWS:
[2:17:49 PM]  https://drake-packages.csail.mit.edu/drake/experimental/drake-0.0.20250521.172625%2Bgitbbcde5ab-cp310-cp310-manylinux_2_34_x86_64.whl
[2:17:49 PM]  https://drake-packages.csail.mit.edu/drake/experimental/drake-0.0.20250521.172625%2Bgitbbcde5ab-cp311-cp311-manylinux_2_34_x86_64.whl
[2:17:49 PM]  https://drake-packages.csail.mit.edu/drake/experimental/drake-0.0.20250521.172625%2Bgitbbcde5ab-cp312-cp312-manylinux_2_34_x86_64.whl
[2:17:49 PM]  https://drake-packages.csail.mit.edu/drake/experimental/drake-0.0.20250521.172625%2Bgitbbcde5ab-cp313-cp313-manylinux_2_34_x86_64.whl
...

Note that there might be multiple wheel files uploaded for different versions of Python. Be sure to match the Python M.NN version you will be using to the -cpMNN- substring in the URL.

(In some cases, it may be necessary to click the “Full Log” and search for the text “Upload complete”, particularly if you wish to also find the checksum URLs.)

To download the wheel, simply click the link or use your favorite HTTP retrieval tool (e.g. wget or curl).

Wheels may also be installed locally for testing without downloading the wheel as a separate step:

python3 -m venv env
env/bin/pip install --upgrade pip
env/bin/pip install <url-of-experimental-wheel>
source env/bin/activate

Testing via External Examples

The examples within Drake’s gallery of external examples provide continuous integration via both Jenkins and GitHub Actions. This provides downstream test coverage for Drake developers to ensure reliability in the build infrastructure. Additionally, the GitHub Actions provide a benefit for end users, in that examples of CI pipelines on public servers for external projects using Drake installations are made easily accessible.

See the external examples continuous integration for details on which examples use Jenkins or GitHub Actions. In general, GitHub Actions is used for the lightweight examples which use some installed version of Drake, while Jenkins is used for complete coverage on examples which pull in Drake externally and build it.

When a new pull request is opened in Drake, members of the RobotLocomotion organization can utilize Jenkins and GitHub Actions to run custom builds. This is especially pertinent for pull requests which affect the build infrastructure.

Jenkins

To test the examples which use Jenkins for CI with a PR branch of Drake, comment on an open pull request using the following command:

  • @drake-jenkins-bot linux-noble-unprovisioned-external-examples please

or follow the instructions above to schedule a build of the external examples job. Note that instead of providing a parameter for the branch of RobotLocomotion/drake-ci, this job instead provides one for drake-external-examples, which should be used if you need to test your Drake changes alongside changes downstream.

GitHub Actions

You can schedule “experimental” builds of a binary package, debian package, and/or a wheel package by following the instructions above. Copy the download URL(s) obtained from the build as described.

From the GitHub Actions workflow in drake-external-examples, notice the message “This workflow has a workflow_dispatch event trigger.” Click “Run workflow” and input the download URL(s) copied from Jenkins in the drop-down menu. All parameters are optional, so you can ignore the package(s) and/or platform(s) that you don’t need. (For those left blank, the default workflow will run using a more “stable” version of Drake, which is usually either source code from master or a nightly release depending on the example).

Local Testing

For CMake, see the drake_cmake_installed example.

For Bazel, see the drake_bazel_external example, and note the comments in:

  • the README, which mentions using --override-module to consume a local checkout of Drake
  • MODULE.bazel, which can be modified to use a particular revision (commit or release) of Drake