What Is Jenkins? How & Why To Use It?


Once installed, Jenkins allows you to either accept the default plugin list or choose your own plugins. In January 2020 Kawaguchi announced he was moving to his new startup, Launchable. He also said that he would be officially stepping back from Jenkins, although staying on the CDF technical oversight committee. We thank the following organizations for their support of the Jenkins
project through free and/or open source licensing programs. Jenkins is a self-contained Java-based program, ready to run
out-of-the-box, with packages for Windows, Linux, macOS and other
Unix-like operating systems. Jenkins runs as a server on a variety of platforms including Windows, MacOS, Unix variants and especially, Linux.

  • In that way, it is possible to isolate problems, solving them faster and provide higher-quality products.
  • Jenkins is an excellent CI/CD tool that has excellent functionalities and the best part is that it is free to use.
  • We’ve written before about the impact that the DevOps movement is having on business operations.
  • The final code is merged only when all the tests are successful.
  • Learn how to create a Jenkins project and run the resulting build job.
  • By using Jenkins, software companies can accelerate their software development process, as Jenkins can automate build and test at a rapid rate.

Pipelines automate testing and reporting on isolated changes in a larger code base in real time and facilitates the integration of disparate branches of the code into a main branch. This definition only describes the upstream open source project. Jenkins provides CI/CD functionality using pipelines to enhance the software development process by automating project build, test, and deployment. It enables teams to release high-quality software at a faster rate. A Jenkins pipeline is a collection of interlinked jobs or events that use automation tools to support continuous delivery pipeline integration and implementation for software development workflow.

Advantages & Shortcomings Of Jenkins

The Jenkins server then reads the Jenkinsfile and runs the tasks, pushing the code from the committed source code to runtime in production. Kohsuke Kawaguchi, who is a Java developer, working at SUN Microsystems, was tired of building the code and fixing errors repetitively. In 2004, he created an automation server called Hudson that automates build and test task. CI is a process that enables you to integrate code changes from multiple developers working on a single project quickly and repeatedly. If the tests pass, the code can be integrated into the build, which can similarly be tested and immediately verified. Currently, over 1,500 Jenkins plugins are available for installation on a Jenkins controller.

jenkins what is

A small number of users are allowed access to the server by employing common approaches such as multifactor authentication, such as the Jenkins UI. The user security features of the HTTP server that is used for the UI can be used to perform this task. However, when using Groovy code inside Jenkins pipelines, it violated the fundamental principles of Jenkins, i.e., Jenkins pipelines should be easy to read, easy to manage, and simple. Jenkins can operate on Windows, macOS, many Unix distributions, and Linux. You can use the Oracle JRE or OpenJDK if you have a Java 8 virtual machine.

What Is a Jenkins Pipeline?

It converts the pipeline into commands using the node block, where a node is a machine that runs Jenkins. A “stage block” is a collection of executable steps that visualize the Jenkins pipeline process, and a “step” is a specific task executing a particular process precisely. Jenkins was a famously preferred alternative to Cruise Control and other build-servers, especially around 2007.

jenkins what is

Written in Java, Jenkins allows continuous development, testing, and deployment of newly created codes. The Jenkins Agent connects to the Jenkins Controller to run build jobs. To run it, you’ll need to install Java on a physical machine, virtual machine, cloud compute instance, Docker image, or Kubernetes cluster. Jenkins dramatically improves the efficiency of the development process. For example, a command prompt code may be converted into a GUI button click using Jenkins. One may accomplish this by encapsulating the script in a Jenkins task.

What is Jenkins? Jenkins For Continuous Integration Edureka

Jenkins is a well-known continuous integration tool developed initially by Hudson before it became available on the open-source market. Hudson was created by Kohsuke Kawaguchi in 2004 while working at Sun Microsystems (acquired by Oracle). There was a disagreement between Oracle and the Hudson community about the infrastructure employed after Oracle purchased Sun Microsystems in 2010. For C/C++, there are plugins to capture errors and warnings from the console, generate build scripts with CMake, run unit tests, and perform static code analysis. A declarative pipeline, the simpler of the two, uses Groovy-compatible syntax—and if you want, you can start the file with #! A declarative pipeline starts with a pipeline block, defines an agent, and defines stages that include executable steps, as in the three-stage example below.

Under Build Triggers we will be selecting the “GitHub hook trigger for GITScm polling” option again. So this pipeline will be triggered whenever we push any new code to the repository. Now we learned how to create a freestyle Jenkins build job and
triggered it automatically using github webhook. Here
you can add more configurations such as being notified when through email
whenever a job build goes wrong. We will be basically launching a HTML static web page in nginx using Docker. So Here is the list of commands we will be executing in our Jenkins execution shell.

Use-cases Working with tools

CI/CD, a key component of a DevOps strategy, allows you to shorten the development lifecycle while maintaining quality by automating tasks like testing. In short, a successful implementation will help you test more often and deploy faster with high quality. Here, you can configure the type of source code manager you are using.

In addition to that, the difference in code coverage can also be reported in the merge request itself. This dramatically reduces the time taken to review a merge request. CD is a development practice that jenkins what is reduces the work required to deploy new code. Code is tested in production-like environments on an ongoing basis, working in short sprints to make it easier to identify and fix bugs as they come up.

Jenkins for CI/CD

The process helps improve speed of delivery, encourages greater collaboration across teams and sets up an infrastructure that is reliable and scalable. Jenkins provides the ability to run a build in parallel across multiple machines to minimize the total amount of time it takes to complete many of these activities. Finally, Jenkins can deploy the build to an environment that allows for any needed user acceptance testing (UAT) before releasing it into production.

These simplified steps encompass the spirit of a continuous integration (CI) environment. Continuous Integration is a process of integrating code changes from multiple developers in a single project many times. If the deployment is successful, the code is pushed to production.

Deploying code into production

CI is a development practice that ensures each new proposed change does not break existing functionality. This means a better experience for both developers and users of the product by making sure that errors don’t make it to production. In addition, ongoing testing allows remote workers to contribute worry-free to a shared repository from wherever they are located. You https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ can even get skilled in server automation, continuous integration, continuous deployment, build pipelines, and more. The main purpose of Jenkins is to automate the continuous integration and delivery processes in software development. It allows for the seamless building, testing, and deployment of applications, ensuring faster and more efficient development cycles.


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