Install Jenkins as WAR file or Install using package installers?

[ABostonGal ABostonGal]

Why would I choose to install Jenkins as a WAR file instead of using a package installer?

[Mark Waite]

My opinion and Linux centric - 

If you need a Jenkins installation that starts easily, runs easily, and upgrades easily, and don't care as much about being able to repeatably create that exact same installation and all its configuration on another machine, use the package installer, especially the Linux package installers (CentOS, Debian, Red Hat, Ubuntu).  You can use Jenkins configuration as code to configure this just as any of the others, but don't add the complexity of managing a Docker image.

If you need a Jenkins installation that you can consistently create the same installation on different machines, then choose a Docker based installation.  Docker installations use the war file and allow you to specify your custom additions.

If you have a platform that does not provide a package installer, then use the war file.

Mark Waite

On Sun, Sep 22, 2019 at 8:01 AM ABostonGal ABostonGal <abost...@gmail.com> wrote:

Why would I choose to install Jenkins as a WAR file instead of using a package installer?

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Thanks!

Mark Waite

[Aditya Shastri]

From a Application Admin and working with App services standpoint, we control the version of Jenkins we use especially because of the plugins that come with it. 

Plugin compatibility needs to be assessed before we can update. We have seen an issue more than once when a plugin doesn't work well with a newer version of Jenkins or support of a plugin we use heavily is deprecated and so on and so forth. 

Also the WAR is very useful if you want to wrap the Jenkins instance around an App server like Tomcat or WebLogic or WebSphere. This helps by providing the features of a full fledged app server to a webapp like Jenkins.