Issue

• Whenever I print out the field: currentBuild.result it is null. When does this get set or am I supposed to set it?

Environment

• CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise
• Pipeline

Resolution

You are supposed to set it yourself. You can use a try catch block for this.

Example that forces a failure then prints result:

node {
    try {
        // do something that fails
        sh "exit 1"
        currentBuild.result = 'SUCCESS'
    } catch (Exception err) {
        currentBuild.result = 'FAILURE'
    }
    echo "RESULT: ${currentBuild.result}"
}

Output:

Started by user anonymous
[Pipeline] Allocate node : Start
Running on master in /tmp/example/workspace/test
[Pipeline] node {
[Pipeline] sh
[test] Running shell script
+ exit 1
[Pipeline] echo
RESULT: FAILURE
[Pipeline] } //node
[Pipeline] Allocate node : End
[Pipeline] End of Pipeline
Finished: FAILURE

Example that doesn’t fail then prints result:

node {
    try {
        // do something that doesn't fail
        echo "Im not going to fail"
        currentBuild.result = 'SUCCESS'
    } catch (Exception err) {
        currentBuild.result = 'FAILURE'
    }
    echo "RESULT: ${currentBuild.result}"
}

Output:

Started by user anonymous
[Pipeline] Allocate node : Start
Running on master in /tmp/example/workspace/test
[Pipeline] node {
[Pipeline] echo
Im not going to fail
[Pipeline] echo
RESULT: SUCCESS
[Pipeline] } //node
[Pipeline] Allocate node : End
[Pipeline] End of Pipeline
Finished: SUCCESS

See also How to iterate through the done build and rerun only steps that failed in Workflow for how this applies to stages.