Jenkins CI, a tool for task automation

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Jenkins I.C.

In our day to day we find ourselves with a diversity of repetitive and often tedious tasks. As sysadmins, we have our wonderful scripts to perform server monitoring and management tasks, while for common users directory backup and cleanup tasks are often useful and appropriate.

Jenkins I.C. is presented as a tool for Continuous integration (CIwhose purpose is to automate repetitive phases of software development such as compilations and unit testing to ensure continuous delivery of functional software. With packages for major distributions of Linux and BSD.

However, it contains a wide range of options that Sysadmins and users may be interested in, such as executing Shell Commands or invoking scripts in a similar way as we would in a Terminal.

One of its most attractive qualities is the ability to configure easily through a web graphical interface, similar to crontab but with immediate visual feedback.

Task Configuration in Jenkins CI

Task Configuration in Jenkins CI

Its main panel offers us, in a very graphic and entertaining way, the status of all our scheduled tasks to verify if they have run successfully or not.

Jenkins Tasks for Your Own Build and Test

Jenkins Tasks for Your Own Build and Test

Additionally, there is the possibility of establishing dependencies between the tasks and subsequent actions depending on the result of the execution of each one of them, which is very useful for automating more complex tasks. Another of its benefits is that it has a web backend, which allows us to link several servers in order to distribute tasks among them or implement Master-Slave architectures so that a master server triggers tasks on the servers associated with it as a slave. It even offers High Availability capabilities so that when there are errors in the Master server, a slave can take over its role and orchestrate the tasks in the rest of the servers.

Jenkins I.C. It is developed in Java and takes advantage of the latest potential of this language to allow the extension of its functionalities by making use of plug ins, which vary from statistics and execution reports to managing clusters and distributed systems.

We invite you to try Jenkins I.C. and increase your productivity to the maximum!


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  1.   Jonatan said

    Great for automation, I did not know this tool, thank you very much!

  2.   Jesus Ballesteros said

    Everything was fine until you said it was developed in Java.

  3.   Gonzalo Martinez said

    Java? It is enough for me not to use it or recommend it. I had a lot of headaches already with systems made in Java.

    1.    eliotime3000 said

      Do you mean Oracle's Java or OpenJDK? Because OpenJDK in many cases has been the main headache for many JAVA developers.

      1.    Gonzalo Martinez said

        I tried with both, and if you see the OpenJDK gave me more trouble, the oracle JDK too.

        The day Java compiles into machine language, at least is interpreted to something straightforward, or is based on something like a CLR (no bytecode, VM, or weird stuff in between), maybe I'll consider it again.

        Java does not seem like a bad language (on the contrary, as a language it seems very good), but its implementation seems disgusting and disastrous.

  4.   Arkhan. said

    I prefer fabric, to create script that fits what I want to do, it is also python

  5.   Alejandro said

    Task automation for sysadmin is fine, but I think the most important thing about Jenkins is continuous integration. Especially the deployment of applications combining it with tools like Ant or Phing (the Ant of PHP). In addition to the large number of QA plugins that can be added.

    Unfortunately there is very little documentation on the internet. And on the other hand, the web interface is quite unintuitive, even for users with a lot of experience.

    Very good article. It is a tool that must be disseminated.

  6.   eliotime3000 said

    For those who do not know:

    Jenkins is used in some CyanogenMod developer repositories that compile ROMs that do not have guaranteed official Cyanogen support for cell phone models like the Samsung Galaxy Mini.

  7.   pepper said

    It's good, but it's for servers, I thought it was for the desktop. It must be a very powerful tool but it is out of my normal user range.

  8.   all said

    It is fine and works for continuous integration of software components, daily and nightly builds