[DISCUSS] Current Status of Gatsby and Future Direction for Jenkins Websites

[Birajit Saikia]

Hi everyone, I’d like to share an update and open a discussion around the ongoing retooling effort for Jenkins websites, particularly in light of evolving concerns about the long-term viability of Gatsby.js.

Over the past few months, the broader development community has raised several issues regarding Gatsby's maintenance status and future direction. Notable references include:

• Gatsby GitHub Issue: React 19 Support Discussion
  
  

• Gatsby Discussion: React 19 Compatibility
  
  

• “Is Gatsby.js Dead?” – Ikius Blog Post
  

Within the Jenkins project, this concern was first raised by Zbynek Konecny. Since then, we’ve been discussing the implications for various Jenkins web properties, especially as part of our Google Summer of Code 2025 project focused on building a non-versioned documentation site. There were discussions in Jenkins Docs gitter channel regarding this among Zbynek, Kris, Damien and Gavin.

After thorough discussion with my mentor Kris Stern, we’ve decided to move the GSoC 2025 project from Gatsby to Vite.js. This shift is motivated by factors such as faster development workflows, better long-term maintainability, and stronger alignment with modern JavaScript tooling ecosystems.

In parallel, other Jenkins web projects are also exploring alternatives:

• Hugo is being evaluated for some CDF websites, and may be considered for the Contributor Spotlight site as well.
  
  

• There's interest in incorporating dynamic UI components like modals and tabs via jenkins.io-components, which could enable broader compatibility with static site generators like Hugo or Eleventy.
  
  

• Future transitions may include moving sites like Success Stories and Plugins away from Gatsby.
  
  

We are still in the planning and experimentation phase, and we’d appreciate your thoughts on this shift ; especially regarding:

• Any downstream dependencies we should be aware of
  

• Insights on tooling or static site generators that may better serve Jenkins use cases
  

• Feedback on the Vite.js approach as part of the GSoC initiative
  

I’ve also opened a related thread on community.jenkins.io for broader input. Looking forward to your thoughts.

Best regards,
Birajit Saikia
@biru-codeastromer

[Baptiste Mathus]

Hey,

> our Google Summer of Code 2025 project focused on building a non-versioned documentation site

Is there a place to read more about this? I'm personally extremely surprised by this statement, and it would seem backward to me that we'd go away from using this concept.

I think this is extremely powerful to use drive-by-PR changes for jenkins.io, and I have a hard time picturing us going back to using some CMS or so?

Thanks

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[Birajit Saikia]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your message .

Just to clarify, we’re not moving away from versioned documentation at all. The main idea behind the GSoC project is to modernize the Jenkins website setup ; not to change the contribution model or how docs are managed.

We’re using Vite.js for the non-versioned parts of the site, like the Roadmap, About, Downloads ,etc pages. The versioned documentation, such as used and dev docs etc, will continue to be handled by Antora  (which is handled in this project too ) . The plan is to bring both parts together into one unified site after both parts are done , so contributors can still use drive-by pull requests as they do now.

Also, just to reassure ,  we’re not introducing any CMS. Everything stays file-based and contribution-friendly, just with a more modern and maintainable tech stack behind it. 

I hope it clarifies your query .

Thanks !

[Daniel Beck]

On Tue, Jul 1, 2025 at 5:10 PM Baptiste Mathus <m...@batmat.net> wrote:

I think this is extremely powerful to use drive-by-PR changes for jenkins.io, and I have a hard time picturing us going back to using some CMS or so?

I'm sure this means "No Jenkins version dropdown on the rendered site" instead of going back to Drupal. See e.g. the version dropdown on docs.github.com.