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What is Jenkins?

What is Jenkins?

April 5th, 2019

What is Jenkins?

Jenkins is an open source continuous integration (CI) server. It helps software developers to build and test projects continuously. So, this tool is used to achieve continuous integration and to automate any tasks with respect to testing, building or installing software. Jenkins is one of the most common continuous integration tools available in the market.
The best part of Jenkins is that it provides over thousand plugins which is utilized to construct, deploy and automate tasks. Yes, this sound to be very helpful. But there is a disadvantage too. The issue is Jenkins UI is not quite user friendly. But don’t be disappointed. There is a hope. The good part is that Jenkins recently released a continuous delivery application to considerably improve its UI (user interface). The name of this software is Blue Ocean, which is again open source automation.
So, if you are looking for the most popular continuous integration tools, then Jenkins is the answer. Jenkins is the most widespread and favoured continuous integration tool for JAVA and .NET. It is a well-known server in DevOps circle too. As Jenkins is very easy to use, additional installments or components are not required. Another fantastic feature of Jenkins is that it has a web based GUI tool for trouble-free updates.

Jenkins is such a remarkable continuous integration tool that it actually incorporates the whole lifecycle of any process including building, testing, documentation, packaging and much more. There is an emerging ideology of modern software developers. and these are continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment practices. And Jenkins helps developers to effectively build, test and deploy codes and stay ahead in their work.
Definitely this sounds fascinating. and yes, there are more to come. You can organize alerts with Jenkins in many ways. You can automate an email notification, pop-ups etc. Jenkins operating systems are Linux, Windows, UNIX and Mac OS X. Jenkins has a great community too. You can get an immediate feedback on how to apply the right configuration for any task.
A little about Jenkins’ original name. Earlier, Jenkins was known by the name of Hudson. But later on, it was changed to Jenkins.

Advantages of Jenkins includes

  • Jenkins is an open source continuous integration tool. It is free and easy to use. So it is quite useful for start-up and small business.
  • Installation of Jenkins is very effortless. Therefore, it can modify works as per components.
  • Jenkins can be easily configured as per the requirements for continuous integration and continuous delivery.
  • It can be used for all kind of operating system and across various platform including OS X, Linux or Windows.
  • Jenkins has over thousand plugins library. So, it is a popular tool among DevOps.
  • Because of its widespread acceptance, it has a very strong community team who are very supportive. Issues are identified and resolved very fast. And software is ready to launch at any given time.
  • As Jenkins has huge plugins system, it makes it very adaptable which allows building, deploying and automating in different platforms. Some of the renowned names include: GitHub, Build Pipeline, Slack, Docker and many more.
  • The integration work of Jenkins is mostly automated. This saves time on overall lifecycle of a project.
  • Jenkins has outstanding features which makes it the top continuous integration tool among other players in the market such as Apache Gump, Bamboo, Travis CI etc

However, with good things there come certain unpleasant things too. Same goes with Jenkins. There are certain issues or drawbacks with Jenkins.

Drawbacks of Jenkins includes

  • To do any basic task in Jenkins you need plugins. As Jenkins is open source, so there could be trouble with plugins. This moreover leads to spending extra time in installing and arranging the software before it could be used. Many software developers may not require this functionality.
  • The larger problem is that majority of the Jenkins’ plugins are coded by third party. So, the quality of these coded may differ. And these may not assure steadiness.
  • Jenkins could not follow Salesforce metadata types.