Managing Old Builds in Jenkins: A Comprehensive Guide

Jenkins, a widely used continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) tool, is indispensible for many development teams. However, with the accumulation of old builds, managing these can become quite a task. This article aims to provide a detailed guide on how to effectively manage old builds in Jenkins, ensuring the platform remains efficient and user-friendly.

What Are Old Builds?

Old builds refer to versions of your project that have been previously built and are no longer required or up-to-date. Accumulation of old builds can lead to clutter and slow down your workflow. Therefore, it is essential to keep your Jenkins instance clean and maintain only the builds you need.

Why Are Old Builds Accumulated in Jenkins?

Jenkins stores build artifacts and associated data. Over time, the accumulation of these old builds can become significant, especially in large-scale CI/CD pipelines. While these builds might still be available in the storage, they often obfuscate the current and relevant builds, potentially slowing down UI performance and cluttering the dashboard. Hence, it is crucial to periodically clean up old builds.

Methods to Manage Old Builds in Jenkins

There are a few methods to manage and clean up old builds in Jenkins:

Restarts and Reloads

One effective method to clean up old builds is through a restart or reload of Jenkins data. This action helps to bring the user interface (UI) up-to-date with the backend data. Here is how you can perform a restart or reload:

Restart Jenkins: Navigate to the Jenkins UI, go to Manage Jenkins Restart Jenkins. This will completely shut down Jenkins and restart it, which can help in refreshing the UI with the latest backend data. Reload Data: Another option involves reloading the data in Jenkins without restarting the server. This might also help synchronize the UI with the backend. However, be mindful that during this process, the system will be temporarily unavailable and it may take a while if there are many builds to process.

Both of these methods are straightforward yet effective, but they require some planning to ensure that the system downtime is minimized, especially if parallel tasks are running on the Jenkins server.

Declarative Pipeline Templates

In addition to restarts, managing pipeline configurations using declarative pipeline templates can help in automatically handling old builds. Declarative pipelines are defined using a .psh file, which can include steps for cleaning up old builds. For instance, you can configure a regular job that runs periodically to prune old builds based on specific criteria such as build age or success/failure status.

Job Configuration Management Plug-In

The Job Configuration History and Metrics Plug-In (Job Config History) can be incredibly valuable for managing old builds. This plug-in provides detailed information about the history of each job and enables you to manage and archive old builds systematically. By using this plug-in, you can configure automatic archiving or deletion of old builds based on certain conditions, ensuring that only the most recent and relevant builds are retained.

Regular Monitoring and Maintenance

While techniques like restarts and the use of declarative pipelines can help, regular monitoring and maintenance are key to keeping Jenkins efficient. Implementing a routine to check and cleanup old builds can prevent any accidental accumulation that might degrade performance. This includes setting up Jenkins jobs or scripts to run automatically at regular intervals to clean up old builds based on age, size, or other relevant metrics.

Conclusion

EFFECTIVELY managing old builds in Jenkins is crucial for maintaining a seamless workflow and ensuring that the tool remains user-friendly and efficient. Whether through periodic restarts or the use of declarative pipelines, keeping your Jenkins environment clean and organized can prevent unnecessary clutter and improve overall performance. By implementing these strategies, you can ensure that your CI/CD pipeline remains a valuable asset for your development team.