Jenkinsfile multiline sh continue on error

Question

I want to do some Docker cleanup steps before a Jenkins build. This is the build step:

steps {
    script {
        try {
            sh '''
                docker container stop  $(docker ps -q)
                docker rm $(docker ps -aq)
                docker  rmi -f $(docker images -q)
                docker build -f Dockerfile_build | tee buildlog.txt
            '''
        } catch(err) {
            echo err.getMessage()
        }
    }
}

The first lines of the sh part may fail, causing the whole build to fail:

[Pipeline] sh
++ docker ps -q
+ docker container stop Error: you must provide at least one name or id
[Pipeline] echo
script returned exit code 125

However, that only means that there's no cleanup to do. I want to continue the build job, no matter how many of the first three lines fail. My question is whether I have to put each of them in its own try/catch block, or if there's a more concise way of saying "try these and ignore any errors".

Answer 1

If you want to continue your script even if you get errors for individual commands you can set +e in your script, but the sh step will never error out. You can also ignore first 3 commands and then error out the last command as well by setting -e and removing it. See the example below.

sh '''
  #!/bin/bash
  set +e
  docker container stop  $(docker ps -q)
  docker rm $(docker ps -aq)
  docker  rmi -f $(docker images -q)
  set -e
  docker build -f Dockerfile_build | tee buildlog.txt
'''