Stepping into this world, one of the most valuable tools I came across is Jenkins. Wikipedia defines Jenkins as “an open source automation server. It helps automate the parts of software development related to building, testing, and deploying, facilitating continuous integration, and continuous delivery”. In simple terms, Jenkins automates the boring, repetitive tasks around building, testing, and deploying software, which allow development teams to focus on writing code and shipping features faster.
Picture this: you’re working on a project with several other developers. Every time someone makes a change to the code, it needs to be tested to ensure it doesn’t break anything. Doing this manually every time is not only a huge time sink but also easy to screw up. That’s where Jenkins comes into play. Jenkins keeps an eye on your version control system, like Git, and whenever it spots a new change, it automatically triggers a series of tasks. Such as compiling the code, running tests, generating reports, and all that good stuff. This process, called Continuous Integration, helps catch bugs early on, making it way easier to fix issues before they make it to production.
Jenkins’ power is not just in being able to automatically run build jobs every time your code changes; it lies in the fact that you have full control over your own CI/CD pipeline. For example, suppose you are working on a web application. You can set up Jenkins so that every time your tests pass and your build is successful, Jenkins automatically deploys your application to a staging server. This means that every time you or your team makes a change, the latest version of the application is deployed to a test environment where everyone can review it. Jenkins can even send notifications to your coworkers via Slack or email, keeping everyone informed about the status of the build and deployment.
"Jenkins is at the heart of our automation efforts, enabling us to deliver software faster and with greater confidence." — Kohsuke Kawaguchi
At its core, Jenkins is a framework that can be used to create functionality beyond what the original authors intended. These functionalities are added as plugins. Whether it’s JUnit for unit tests, Docker for deploying containers, or Prometheus for monitoring application performance, Jenkins has a large ecosystem of plugins that integrate with almost any tool or technology you use in your development process. Additionally, if a plugin doesn’t exist one can be developed to allow Jenkins to do exactly what they needed to do.
