Plugins are the primary means of enhancing the functionality of a Jenkinsenvironment to suit organization- or user-specific needs. There areover a thousand different pluginswhich can be installed on a Jenkins controller and to integrate variousbuild tools, cloud providers, analysis tools, and much more.
Plugins can be automatically downloaded, with their dependencies, from theUpdate Center. The Update Center is a serviceoperated by the Jenkins project which provides an inventory of open sourceplugins which have been developed and maintained by various members of theJenkins community.
If the list of available plugins is empty, the controller may be incorrectlyconfigured or has not yet downloaded plugin meta-data from the Update Center.Clicking the Check now button forces Jenkins to attempt to contact itsconfigured Update Center.
Administrators may also use the Jenkins CLI which provides a commandto install plugins. Scripts to manage Jenkins environments, or configurationmanagement code, may need to install plugins without direct user interaction inthe web UI. The Jenkins CLI allows a command line user or automation tool todownload a plugin and its dependencies.
The Update Center only allows the installation of the most recently releasedversion of a plugin. In cases where an older release of the plugin is desired,a Jenkins administrator can download an older .hpi archive and manuallyinstall that on the Jenkins controller.
Copy the downloaded .hpi` file into the JENKINS_HOME/plugins directory onthe Jenkins controller (for example, on Debian systems JENKINS_HOME is generally/var/lib/jenkins).If an administrator manually copies a plugin archive into the plugins directory, it should be named with a .jpi suffix to match the file names used by plugins installed from the update center.
Updates are listed in the Updates tab of the Plugins page and can beinstalled by checking the checkboxes of the desired plugin updates and clickingthe Download now and install after restart button.
When a plugin is no longer used in a Jenkins environment, it is prudent toremove the plugin from the Jenkins controller. This provides a number of benefitssuch as reducing memory overhead at boot or runtime, reducing configurationoptions in the web UI, and removing the potential for future conflicts with newplugin updates.
The simplest way to uninstall a plugin is to navigate to the Installed tab onthe Plugins page. From there, Jenkins will automatically determinewhich plugins are safe to uninstall, those which are not dependencies of otherplugins, and present a button for doing so.
A plugin may also be uninstalled by removing the corresponding .jpifile from the JENKINS_HOME/plugins directory on the controller. The plugin willcontinue to function until the controller has been restarted.
Uninstalling a plugin does not remove the configuration that the plugin mayhave created. If there are existing jobs/nodes/views/builds/etc configurationsthat reference data created by the plugin, during boot Jenkins will warn thatsome configurations could not be fully loaded and ignore the unrecognized data.
Jenkins provides a facility for purging configuration left behind byuninstalled plugins. Navigate to Manage Jenkins and then click on ManageOld Data to review and remove old data.
Disabling a plugin is a softer way to retire a plugin. Jenkins will continue torecognize that the plugin is installed, but it will not start the plugin, andno extensions contributed from this plugin will be visible.
The disable-plugin command receives a list of plugins to be disabled. Theoutput will display messages for both successful and failed operations. If youonly want to see error messages, the -quiet option can be specified.The -strategy option controls what action will be taken when one of the specified pluginsis listed as an optional or mandatory dependency of another enabled plugin.
In the same way than enabling and disabling plugins from the UI requires a restartto complete the process, the changes made with the CLI commands will take effectonce Jenkins is restarted. The -restart option forces a safe restart of theinstance once the command has successfully finished, so the changes will beimmediately applied.
However, when a bundled plugin has been manually updated, Jenkins will markthat plugin as pinned to the particular version. On the file system, Jenkinscreates an empty file called JENKINS_HOME/plugins/PLUGIN_NAME.jpi.pinnedto indicate the pinning.
It is safe to update a bundled plugin to a version offered by the UpdateCenter. This is often necessary to pick up the newest features and fixes. Thebundled version is occasionally updated, but not consistently.
The Plugin Manager allows plugins to be explicitly unpinned. TheJENKINS_HOME/plugins/PLUGIN_NAME.hpi.pinned file can also be manuallycreated/deleted to control the pinning behavior. If the pinned file ispresent, Jenkins will use whatever plugin version the user has specified.If the file is absent, Jenkins will restore the plugin to the default versionon startup.
It is "implied" since it is not stated explicitly in the plugin, and it is a dependency because Jenkins core is uncertain if the APIs available in Jenkins core, prior to the separation of the plugin, are necessary or not.
For example, because the Instance Identity plugin was separated from Jenkins core, Jenkins core is uninformed if the dependent plugin needs any functionality that was previously present in Jenkins core.This creates an implied dependency.
As a Jenkins administrator, you can see the plugins that have an implied dependency from the plugin manager page.Hover over the "uninstall" button and a list of plugins with an implied dependency is displayed.
The implied dependency can be removed by releasing a new version of the plugin that depends on a newer minimum Jenkins core.The Improve a plugin tutorial provides steps that can assist plugin developers as they update the plugin to depend on a newer minimum Jenkins core.
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Go to /manage/pluginManager/ and check if there are any plugins that need to be updated.
Look especially for the 2 plugins in the cycle apache-httpcomponents-client-4-api and Oracle Java SE Development Kit Installer (this is the jdk-tool plugin)
Also check if you really need the Oracle Installer, you only need it when you need to provide the Oracle jdk as a tool for your builds. If not the try to uninstall it (this might not work when you have plugins that are built for an older version of Jenkins core)
Because there was no internet, we uploaded all plugins manually, i.e. looking at the plugin page (e.g. ) and then downloading from the archive (e.g. ) the .hpi file. As you have to use a relatively old version of Jenkins you may want to check the changelog of the plugin, if you have to use an older version.
This plugin is designed to handle complex build workflows (aka build pipelines) as a dedicated entity in Jenkins. Without such a plugin, to manage job orchestration the user has to combine parameterized-build, join, downstream-ext and a few more plugins, polluting the job configuration. The build process is then scattered in all those jobs and very complex to maintain. Build Flow enables you to define an upper level Flow item to manage job orchestration and link up rules, using a dedicated DSL. This DSL makes the flow definition very concise and readable.
Environment variables from a job can be obtained using the following, which is especially useful for getting things like the checkout revision used by the SCM plugin ('P4_CHANGELIST', 'GIT_REVISION', etc) :
As any Job, the Flow is executed by a trigger, and the Cause is exposed to the flow DSL. If you want to implement a build-pipeline after a commit on your scm, you can configure the flow to be triggered as the first scm-polling job is run, but you can as well use any other trigger (manual trigger, XTrigger plugin, ...) for your flow to integrate in a larger process.
Plugins extend the functionalities and capabilities of Jenkins to make it suitable for all user-specific needs. These plugins encompass source code management, administration, platforms, UI/UX, building management, and much more. They help Jenkins integrate with practically every tool in the CI/CD toolchain.
For instance, if you want to integrate Jenkins with version control tools like Git, plugins related to Git let you do that. On the other hand, for integration with tools like Maven, Amazon EC2, respective plugins must be installed in your Jenkins.
However, with a plethora of plugins present, it could be a herculean task for choosing which plugins to use. Selecting the best plugins, especially when each one is unique and excellent in its own way, is arduous. Browsing through all 1800+ plugins will be a tough row to hoe. Fret not! We are here to help you choose the best Jenkins plugins for DevOps.
Among the extensive list of plugins for Jenkins, the Git plugin holds a prominent position. As the name suggests, it facilitates essential git functions for Jenkins projects. It offers Git operations such as pulling, fetching, checking out, branching, listing, merging, tagging, and pushing repositories. Git plugin has the functionality, performance, security, and flexibility that the DevOps teams need. It serves as a Distributed Version Control DevOps tool that supports distributed non-linear workflows by providing data assurance for developing quality software. Moreover, it enables access to GitHub as a Source Code Management (SCM) system, which acts as a repository browser for many other providers.
Jira plugin is one of the most popular and sought-after ticketing tools. It is an open-source plugin that integrates Jenkins with the Atlassian Jira Software (both Cloud and Server versions), enabling the DevOps teams more visibility into the development pipeline. This plugin also allows you to display builds inside Jira, automatically send data about builds and developments from Jenkins to Jira, and track Jira issues in Jenkins, among other vital functions.
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