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What is Jenkins

What is Jenkins

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chandrakant hatti
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What is Jenkins and why do we use it

Jenkins is a Java-based open-source automation tool with CI plugins. Jenkins is used to continually create and test your software projects, making it easier for developers to incorporate changes and for users to get a new build.

It also integrates with a variety of testing and deployment platforms, allowing you to provide your software on a continuous basis.Organizations may use Jenkins to automate the software development process and speed up the process.

Jenkins combines a variety of development life-cycle operations, such as build, document, test, package, stage, deploy, static analysis, and more.Jenkins uses plugins to do Continuous Integration. Plugins allow various DevOps phases to be integrated.

What is Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration is a development approach that requires developers to commit changes to the source code in a common repository numerous times a day or more often.

The repository is then constructed from every commit made. As a result, the teams are able to identify issues early on. Apart from that, the Continuous Integration tool may do a variety of additional tasks, such as deploying the build application to the test server, distributing build and test results to the appropriate teams, and so on.

How Jenkins works

Jenkins may be operated as a server on a variety of operating systems, including Windows, MacOS, Unix versions, and, most notably, Linux. It runs on the Oracle JRE or OpenJDK and requires a Java 8 virtual machine or higher. Jenkins is often executed as a Java servlet within a Jetty application server. Other Java application servers, such as Apache Tomcat, can be used to execute it.

Jenkins has recently been converted to operate within a Docker container. Jenkins images that are read-only are accessible in the Docker Hub online repository.

Pipelines are needed to run Jenkins. A pipeline is a set of steps that the Jenkins server will follow to complete the CI/CD process’s needed tasks.

Jenkins pipeline

Jenkins Pipeline is a set of plugins that let you set up and use continuous delivery pipelines in Jenkins. A continuous delivery pipeline is an automated representation of your software delivery process, from version control through users and customers.

Jenkins Features

  • Easy Installation

Jenkins is a platform-independent, Java-based software that may be installed on Windows, Mac OS, and Unix-like operating systems.

  • Easy Configuration

Jenkins’ online interface is simple to set up and configure, and it includes error checks and a built-in help feature.

  • Available Plugins

The Update Center has hundreds of plugins that integrate with every tool in the CI and CD toolchain.

  • Extensible

Jenkins’ plugin design allows it to be expanded in almost any way, giving it practically limitless capabilities.

  • Free Open Source

Jenkins is an open-source project with a large community behind it.

Advantages of Jenkins include

  • Open source tool and great community support.

  • easy to install.

  • It has 1000+ plugins to ease your work. If a plugin does not exist, you can code it and share it with the community.

  • free of cost.

  • built with Java, because it is portable to all the major platforms.

Disadvantages of Jenkins

  • Developer Centric

  • Setting Change Issues

  • Lots of plug-ins have a problem with the updating process

  • All plug-ins are not compatible with the declarative pipeline syntax

  • The error message is not clear sometimes. It becomes hard to find out what went wrong

Jenkins