What is Jenkins?
Jenkins is a continuous integration tool that automates the process of building, testing and deploying software. It is an open-source automation server that can be installed on a physical or virtual machine. Jenkins provides a web-based user interface for managing jobs and projects.
It also enables you to release your software on a continuous basis by interacting with a variety of testing and deployment methods. Do you know what is jenkins? Organizations may use Jenkins to automate the software development process and speed up the process. Jenkins combines a variety of development life-cycle operations, such as build, document, test, package, stage, deploy, static analysis, and more.
What is Continuous Integration? and How does it work?
Continuous Integration is the practice of repeatedly integrating code updates from different developers in a single project. After a code commit, the software is instantly tested. Code is created and tested with each change. The build is then tested for deployment if the test passes. The code gets pushed to production if the deployment is successful. This continuous process of committing, building, testing, and deploying is known as continuous integration/deployment.
It is an open-source project that was created by Kohsuke Kawaguchi in 2004. Jenkins is written in Java and can be installed on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, or any other operating system also on mobile. Jenkins is also a mobile testing tools that come with numerous plugins that allow integration with different test automation tools and frameworks to be part of the test pipeline.
Why use Jenkins for Continuous Integration? Some may believe that the old-fashioned method of software development is superior. Let’s have a look at the benefits of CI with Jenkins using the following example. Assume a team of ten engineers is working on a common repository. Some developers finish their projects in 25 days, while others require 30 days.
| Before Jenkins | After Jenkins |
| When all of the Developers had finished their allocated coding jobs, they would all commit their code at the same moment. Build is then tested and deployed. A single build was completed after several days, and code commits and test cycles were uncommon. | As soon as the developer contributes code, it gets built and tested. Throughout the day, Jenkin will build and test code several times. Jenkins will deploy the source into the test server and notify the deployment team if the build is successful. If the build fails, Jenkins will alert the developer team of the faults. |
| Because the code was created all at once, some developers would have to wait until others finished coding before checking their builds. | After any of the Developers commit, the code is built instantly. |
| Isolating, detecting, and fixing mistakes for numerous commits is a difficult process. | Because the code is built after every single developer’s change, it’s simple to figure out whose code caused the build to fail. |
| Because the code building and testing process is largely manual, there are several possibilities for failure. | Build and test processes that are automated save time and reduce problems. |
| Once all of the errors have been repaired and tested, the code is deployed. | After each successful build and test, the code is deployed. |
| The development cycle is lengthy or rather slow. | Faster Development cycle after Jenkins is ensured. |
