Jenkins and Continuous Integration

Jenkins is an open source tool which comes with built in plugin for continuous integration purpose. Jenkins primary functionality is to keep a track of version control system and to initiate build and monitor a build in case of any changes. Jenkins monitors the entire process and provides reports and alert notifications.

For using Jenkins we would require the source code repository (example Git repository, PVCS, SVN), a working build script (example Ant / Maven script), which is checked-in to the code repository.

Jenkins captures any build failures during integration stage, automatically generates build report notification for every code commit changes, sends notification to developers about build report success / failure, achieves continuous integration and test driven development. With simple steps, maven release project is automated. Jenkins comes with built in plugin for continuous integration like Maven 2 project, Amazon EC2, etc.

Jenkin is mainly integrated with two components, version control repositories like GIT, SVN and build tools like Ant, Maven.

Within Jenkins, builds can be triggered by source code management commits, can be triggered after completion of other builds, can be scheduled to run at specified time, or by manual build requests

In order for Jenkins to do a clean build, it’s advised that developer perform a successful clean install on local machine with all unit tests successful. Only then the code changes must be checked into the code repository.

In case a Jenkins build failure, open the console output for the build and debug to see if any file changes were missed. If not able to find the issue that way, then clean and update your local workspace to replicate the problem and try to resolve it.