Migration project: This repo is forked from a Jenkins-based CI/CD example and extended to demonstrate a real-world pipeline modernization — migrating from Jenkins to GitHub Actions with automated deployment to a Kubernetes cluster.

This is a hands-on migration of a Spring Boot Java application's CI/CD pipeline from Jenkins to GitHub Actions, with container deployment to Kubernetes. It models the kind of legacy CI/CD modernization work common in enterprise DevOps transformations.

Before (Jenkins): Manual pipeline configuration, Jenkinsfile-driven builds, Jenkins server dependency

After (GitHub Actions): Event-driven workflows, containerized builds, automated deployment to Kubernetes via kubectl

Developer pushes code to GitHub
          ↓
  GitHub Actions workflow triggers
          ↓
  Maven build + unit tests
          ↓
  Docker image build
          ↓
  Push image to container registry (ECR / Docker Hub)
          ↓
  Deploy to Kubernetes cluster
  (configure-k8s-registry.sh + kubectl apply)
          ↓
  Verify deployment rollout

Trigger model

• Jenkins: Polling or webhook, requires server uptime
• GitHub Actions: Native event-driven (on: push, on: pull_request), no server required

Secrets management

• Jenkins: Credentials plugin, server-side secrets
• GitHub Actions: Repository/org-level secrets injected at runtime via ${{ secrets.NAME }}

Kubernetes deployment

• Configured containerd runtime to authenticate against private registry
• Created Kubernetes image pull secrets for registry access
• Deployment via kubectl apply from within the Actions runner

Multi-cloud portability

• buildspec.yml — AWS CodeBuild equivalent for ECS/ECR deployments
• azure-pipelines.yml — Azure DevOps equivalent
• Demonstrates pipeline logic that is tool-agnostic at its core

In enterprise environments, Jenkins has been the dominant CI/CD tool for over a decade. However:

• Jenkins requires infrastructure to run and maintain (the server itself becomes a reliability dependency)
• GitHub Actions removes that overhead for teams already using GitHub as their SCM
• Actions workflows live in the repo — versioned, reviewable, portable

This migration pattern is increasingly common in DevOps modernization programs.

• Java 11+
• Maven
• Docker
• kubectl configured to a cluster

mvn clean install

docker build -t devops-example .
docker run -p 8080:8080 devops-example

./setup-k8s-registry-access.sh
./configure-k8s-registry.sh

• AWS EKS Lab (in progress): Greenfield EKS cluster build using Terraform, with GitHub Actions deployment pipeline — see aws-eks-devsecops-lab

GitHub Actions Jenkins Docker Kubernetes Spring Boot Maven AWS ECR AWS ECS Azure Pipelines Shell scripting Groovy