What is Jenkins?
Jenkins is a well-known open-source tool that aids in the implementation of Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment/Continuous Delivery (CD) processes by automating parts of the software development pipeline such as building, testing, and deployment. It provides a centralized platform for automating the entire build pipeline, from code changes to automatic build creation, auto-execution of all layers of tests (Unit, Integration, and End to End), and finally, auto-deploying the successful build. This allows developers to make more frequent changes while also giving end users more freedom by making new features available more frequently.
Jenkins can be installed through native system packages, Docker, or even run standalone by any machine with a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed.
What are the advantages of Jenkins?
- Open Source – It is open source and it is user-friendly, easy to install and does not require additional installations or components.
- Easily configurable – Jenkins can be easily modified and extended. It deploys code instantly, generates test reports. Jenkins can be configured according to the requirements for continuous integrations and continuous delivery.
- Good Plugin Ecosystem – Jenkins is flexible because of its large plugin library, which allows for building, deploying, and automating across multiple platforms. It has plugins for TestNG Report, JUnit Report, Cucumber Report, Extent Report, HTML Publisher Report, Gradle, Serenity.
- Cloud-based architecture – Jenkins tool also supports cloud-based architecture so that you can deploy Jenkins in cloud-based platforms.
- Platform Independent – Jenkins is available for all platforms and different operating systems, whether OS X, Windows or Linux.
- Easy support – It is open source and widely used, there is no shortage of support from large online communities of agile teams.
- Distributed – It is easily distributable due to its master-slave architecture, which we saw in the above section. It can distribute work across multiple machines for efficiently handling the build processes, tests, and deployments.
- Email Notification – It has notification capability regarding the status of builds in the form of an email.
- Parallel Execution – Parallel execution of builds in a single workflow is possible in Jenkins with the help of the Pipelines feature.
Continuous Integration with Jenkins
1. The code is first committed by a developer/developers to the source code repository.
2. This shared repository is checked on a regular basis or frequently by the Jenkins server. It will pull all of those changes and begin making preparations for the most recent build as soon as it discovers the new commit.
3. Here two prospects will be available. Either the build will be unsuccessful or successful.
4. The team will receive notification right away if the build fails.
5. Jenkins is prepared to deploy the successful build to the test server if the build succeeds.
Subsequent to running the expand on the test server, the group will get the notice of the test and assemble results.
With each successful commit, the teams will always have a deployable build. This process will be ongoing.
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