Jenkins is an
open source automation server. It helps automate the parts of
software development
Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...
related to
building
A building or edifice is an enclosed Structure#Load-bearing, structure with a roof, walls and window, windows, usually standing permanently in one place, such as a house or factory. Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and functions, a ...
,
testing, and
deploying, facilitating
continuous integration, and
continuous delivery. It is a server-based system that runs in
servlet containers such as
Apache Tomcat, or by default as a stand-alone web-application in co-bundled
Eclipse Jetty. It supports
version control tools, including
AccuRev,
CVS,
Subversion
Subversion () refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to sabotage the established social order and its structures of Power (philosophy), power, authority, tradition, h ...
,
Git,
Mercurial,
Perforce,
ClearCase, and
RTC, and can execute
Apache Ant,
Apache Maven, and
sbt based projects as well as arbitrary
shell scripts and Windows
batch commands.
History
The Jenkins project was originally named ''
Hudson'', and was renamed in 2011 after a dispute with
Oracle, which had
forked the project and claimed rights to the project name. The Oracle fork, ''Hudson'', continued to be developed for a time before being donated to the
Eclipse Foundation. Oracle's Hudson is no longer maintained and was announced as obsolete in February 2017.
Around 2007 Hudson became known as a better alternative to
Cruise Control and other open-source build-servers.
[
] At the
JavaOne conference in May 2008 the software won the Duke's Choice Award in the Developer Solutions category.
[
]
During November 2010, after the acquisition of
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
by
Oracle, an issue arose in the Hudson community with respect to the infrastructure used, which grew to encompass questions over the stewardship and control by Oracle.
Negotiations between the principal project contributors and Oracle took place, and although there were many areas of agreement a key sticking point was the
trademarked name "Hudson," after Oracle claimed the right to the name and applied for a trademark in December 2010. As a result, on January 11, 2011, a call for votes was made to change the project name from "Hudson" to "Jenkins." The proposal was overwhelmingly approved by a community vote on January 29, 2011, creating the Jenkins project.
On February 1, 2011, Oracle said that they intended to continue development of Hudson, and considered Jenkins a fork rather than a rename. Jenkins and Hudson therefore continued as two independent projects, each claiming the other was the fork. As of June 2019, the Jenkins organization on
GitHub had 667 project members and around 2,200 public repositories, compared with Hudson's 28 project members and 20 public repositories with the last update in 2016.
In 2011, creator
Kohsuke Kawaguchi received an
O'Reilly Open Source Award for his work on the Hudson/Jenkins project.
On April 20, 2016, version 2 was released with the ''Pipeline'' plugin enabled by default. The plugin allows for writing build instructions using a domain specific language based on
Apache Groovy.
Jenkins replaced Hudson since February 8, 2017 in Eclipse.
In March 2018
Jenkins X software project for
Kubernetes was publicly presented, with support for different cloud providers including AWS EKS among others.
Builds
Builds can be triggered by various means, for example:
* a webhook that gets triggered upon pushed
commits in a version control system
* scheduling via a
cron-like mechanism
* requesting a specific build
URL.
* after the other builds in the queue have completed
* invoked by other builds
Plugins
Plugins have been released for Jenkins that extend its use to projects written in languages other than
Java
Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...
. Plugins are available for integrating Jenkins with most version control systems and bug databases. Many build tools are supported via their respective plugins. Plugins can also change the way Jenkins looks or add new functionality. There are a set of plugins dedicated for the purpose of unit testing that generate test reports in various formats (for example,
JUnit bundled with Jenkins,
MSTest,
NUnit, etc.) and
automated testing that supports automated tests. Builds can generate test reports in various formats supported by plugins (
JUnit support is currently bundled) and Jenkins can display the reports and generate trends and render them in the GUI.
Mailer
Allows configuring email notifications for build results. Jenkins will send emails to the specified recipients whenever a certain important event occurs, such as:
# Failed build.
# Unstable build.
# Successful build after a failed build, indicating that a crisis is over.
# Unstable build after a successful one, indicating that there's a regression.
Credentials
Allows storing credentials in Jenkins. Provides a standardized API for other plugins to store and retrieve different types of credentials.
Monitoring external jobs
Adds the ability to monitor the result of externally executed jobs.
SSH agents
This plugin allows managing agents (formerly known as slaves) running on *nix machines over SSH. It adds a new type of agent launch method. This launch method will
# Open a SSH connection to the specified host as the specified username,
# Check the default version of Java for that user,
#
ot implemented yetIf the default version is not compatible with Jenkins's , try to find a proper version of Java
# Once it has a suitable version of Java, copy the latest via SFTP (falling back to scp if SFTP is not available),
# Start the agent process.
Javadoc
This plugin adds Javadoc support to Jenkins. This functionality used to be a part of the core, but as of Jenkins 1.431, it was split off into separate plugins.
The plugin enables the selection of "Publish Javadoc" as a post-build action, specifying the directory where the Javadoc is to be gathered and if retention is expected for each successful build.
Online explanation
Jenkins can be used to schedule and monitor the running of a shell script via user interface instead of command prompt.
Security
Jenkins' security depends on two factors: access control and protection from external threats. Access control can be customized via two ways: user authentication and authorization. Protection from external threats such as
CSRF attacks and malicious builds is supported as well.
Awards and recognition
*
InfoWorld Bossie Award (Best of Open Source Software Award) in 2011.
* Received Geek Choice Award in 2014.
See also
*
Comparison of continuous integration software
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jenkins (Software)
2011 software
Build automation
Compiling tools
Continuous integration
Free software programmed in Java (programming language)
Java development tools
Software using the MIT license