Jenkins : An Open source Automation Server
- What is Jenkins?
- Why use Jenkins?
- Features and Plugin of Jenkins
- Industry Use case
What is Jenkins?
Jenkins is a open source automation tool used for continuous integration and continuous deployment of the code. It supports Java. With Jenkins, organizations can accelerate the software development process through automation. Jenkins integrates development life-cycle processes of all kinds, including build, document, test, package, stage, deploy, static analysis, and much more.
Why use Jenkins?
Jenkins is a software that allows continuous integration. Jenkins will be installed on a server where the central build will take place. The following flowchart demonstrates a very simple workflow of how Jenkins works.
Features of Jenkins
- Easy Installation
Its extremely easy to install Jenkins all we need to do is download Java Development Kit(jdk). Download and install Jenkins. Run the Jenkins server on localhost .Run and build jobs on the Jenkins
2. Continuous Integration
Continuous Integration is a process of integrating code changes from multiple developers in a single project many times. The software is tested immediately after a code commit. With each code commit, code is built and tested. If the test is passed, the build is tested for deployment. If the deployment is successful, the code is pushed to production.
Jenkins does this all in the automated way. Triggers are used to do so.
3. Continuous Delivery
Continuous Delivery is a process, where code changes are automatically built, tested, and prepared for a release to production.
4. Easy Configuration
With the help of the “Manage Jenkins” we can configure it according to the requirement in just one click. Adding plugins , triggers building job is much more easier.
5. Plug-in, Distributed and Extensible
Jenkins is an extensible automation server with more than 1800 plugins providing integrations for hundreds of tools and services. It makes it more flexible to use. Jenkins can be easily set up and configured via its web interface, which includes on-the-fly error checks and built-in help. Jenkins can easily distribute work across multiple machines, helping drive builds, tests and deployments across multiple platforms faster.
Industry Use Case
NETFLIX
Netflix is a streaming service that offers a wide variety of award-winning TV shows, movies, anime, documentaries, and more on thousands of internet-connected devices. So Netflix greatly uses Jenkins for its use case. Once a line of code has been built and tested locally using Nebula, it is ready for continuous integration and deployment. The first step is to push the updated source code to a git repository. Teams are free to find a git workflow that works for them.
Once the change is committed, a Jenkins job is triggered. Netflix’s use of Jenkins for continuous integration has evolved over the years. They started with a single massive Jenkins master in their datacenter and have evolved to running 25 Jenkins masters in AWS. Jenkins is used throughout Netflix for a variety of automation tasks above just simple continuous integration.
A Jenkins job is configured to invoke Nebula to build, test and package the application code. If the repository being built is a library, Nebula will publish the .jar to our artifact repository. If the repository is an application, then the Nebula os package plugin will be executed.
That’s all about Jenkins.
