Jenkins is a Java-based open-source server that runs on any platform. It helps you to simplify the continuous integration process by allowing you to perform a series of actions. It automates program builds in a continuous manner and notifies developers of errors as soon as they occur. One of the main reasons for Jenkins’ success is its vibrant community. Jenkins has a flourishing plugin community in addition to being extensible.
Jenkins monitors and manages software delivery processes throughout the lifecycle, including build, document, test, package, phase, deployment, static code review, and more.It can be configured to track any code changes in GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab. You can use container technologies like Docker and Kubernetes to run tests and then take actions in production like rolling back or forward.
Emergence of Jenkins
While working at Sun Microsystems, Kohsuke Kawaguchi developed Jenkins (then named Hudson). Hudson was first released in February 2005 after being developed in the summer of 2004. After the Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, the Hudson group accepted a plan to establish the Jenkins project. In February 2011, Oracle decided that Hudson’s growth could proceed, so it was forked instead of renamed Jenkins. Despite the fact that Hudson and Jenkins were established independently, Jenkins accumulated much more projects and contributors than Hudson. As a result, the society no longer maintains Hudson.
Features of Jenkins
This provides the following powerful developer-centric features:
1. Open-source
It is free to use because it is open-source. The community is very involved, which makes it a very useful CI/CD tool. You can get help from the Jenkins community with everything related to Jenkins, including extensibility, support, documentation, and other features.
2. Easy Installations
It is a self-contained Java software that doesn’t complain about the platform it’s running on. Moreover, It runs on almost all common operating systems, including Windows, various Unix flavours, and Mac OS.
3. Easy configurations
Its web interface, which provides on-the-fly error checks and built-in support, makes it simple to set up and configure.
4. Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery System
Jenkins can be used as a basic CI server or transformed into a continuous delivery hub for any project since it is an extensible automation server. It may be used in conjunction with a variety of testing and deployment tools.
5. Easy Distribution of Work
Jenkins can quickly spread work across multiple computers, allowing builds, tests, and deployments to be completed faster across multiple platforms.
6. Plugin Ecosystem
It connects with almost every tool in the continuous integration and distribution toolchain due to the Update Center’s hundreds of plugins.
Jenkins Deployment Process
- Plan – Anything that happens before the developers start writing code is covered in the Plan stage. To direct future growth, requirements and feedback are gathered to create a product roadmap.
- Develop – After you’ve done working on your updates, save them to the Source Control Repository.
- Build – The source code is translated into a standalone format that can be used on a local machine, test server, cloud, etc.
- Deploy – This step entails all activities necessary to make the software/product/update/system operational.
- Test – This is the procedure for ensuring that real outcomes meet anticipated results and that software is working as intended.
- Release – The testing packages will be released to servers and other endpoints in the meantime. Jenkins aids continuous integration and facilitates technological aspects of continuous delivery by automating the non-human portion of the software development process.
- Monitor – Deploying stages are constantly monitored, and updates are submitted to the appropriate stages as a point of reference for modifications.
Limitations
- Jenkins is typically managed by a single person, which causes monitoring and accountability issues with the pushed code.
- Jenkins doesn’t make it easy for one developer to see the commits made by another member of the team. For larger projects, this makes monitoring the overall release progress a daunting task. This can get the release manager into a lot of trouble.
- Jenkins does not have any analytics on the end-to-end deployment period (there are plugins, but they are insufficient). This is due to a lack of overall monitoring, which also leads to a lack of analytics.
- There isn’t a function for backing up and restoring jobs.
- For first-time users, a UI that is very unintuitive can be very frustrating. It will take some time for new users to become accustomed to using the tool.
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Conclusion
Jenkins makes it easy to set up a continuous integration or continuous delivery (CI/CD) environment utilizing pipelines for almost any combination of languages and source code repositories, as well as automate other popular development tasks. It does not eradicate the need for individual stage scripts, but it does provide a simpler and more stable way to incorporate the entire chain of build, test, and deployment tools than you could easily build yourself.
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