Jenkins Reviews

We use this solution for continuous integration and deployment, using Groovy Script for pipeline node configuration.

This solution has helped us in automating the build and test process, reducing time.

The most valuable features are plugins that make my server highly available.

The upgrades need improvement.

Jenkins is part of our test infrastructure. We organize the test execution mainly of our performance tests, based on JMeter.

Second, the deployment of release candidates in our test infrastructure is managed using Jenkins.

In the future, we want to use Jenkins more in the field of continuous integration and continuous deployment.

For test automation, Jenkins seems to be our main and central solution at the moment. We want to extend this in the future towards Jenkins pipelines, which can be very useful for having a more dynamic test infrastructure.

Currently, using Jenkins for automatic testing is the most valuable feature for us.

It is very useful for us to be able to collect and manage automatic processing pipelines.

We have issues with the following points:

• The usability and user interface could be improved.
• Clearer feedback for problems and errors would be useful.
  
• The learning curve is quite steep at the moment.
• Our security policy does not allow normal users to introduce additional modules. A simpler way of extending the basic functionality would be nice.

When there is enough disk space and RAM, the solution is stable.

Scalability is not an issue for us.

There is a large open source community where you can find a lot of workarounds and solutions when you have a problem.

We did not use another solution previously.

The setup is straightforward.

Our in-house SysOps team managed to install Jenkins.

Jenkins is open source and free.

We also evaluated Bamboo but decided to go with Jenkins because it is open source and free.

We recommend having the proper infrastructure, and to ensure the maintenance of the server is performed.

This is our CD solution for Java APIs and Microsites.

This solution automates the deployment process and therefore increases productivity.

The most valuable feature is its ability to connect with different tools and technologies.

This solution would be improved with the inclusion of an Artifactory (Universal artifact repository manager).

This solution is the primary component for our automatic release process, including code smell, integration, and deployment.

This solution has provided us with better quality and less time to market for our software products. We can also automate many procedures like code review, testing, and deployment.

There are a large number of plugins available for integration with third party systems.

The user interface could be updated a little. I think that a REST API is needed to expand the integration capabilities.

I use Jenkins for Continous Integration or Continous Deployment to run test case execution in Nightly build atmosphere. Integrating test scripts to Jenkins is easier and it can run based on the frequency mentioned in settings.

Jenkins has helped us in executing our test scripts without the Dev team during night time.  It automatically fetches the latest build or codes and execute all your test scripts and share the report with the respective team and stakeholders.

I have found the following features extremely helpful.

• It is open source & user-friendly.
• It can deploy code instantly & generate test reports. The requirements for continuous integration and continuous deployment can be configured manually.
  
• Integration work is automated.
  
• It can be integrated with other major tools.

They should improve the Version Control tracking system in Jenkins.

We use it for build.

It improves our process because it's incorporated with the code. We don't need a UI to design the build process. It's like code for building.

Pipeline.

I think we have everything we need in Jenkins, really we're content with what we have in it. If I had to name something, I'd like to see more on the cloud, cloud integration, like to Amazon and  Google. I'd like to see more plugins for those.

- Run automated tests with release pipeline.

- Run tests against different environment.

- Manage selenium grid.

- Integrate with slack, browserstack and AWS.

CI tools such Jenkins and TeamCity, totally helps our release and tests. It saves our money, time and labour cost. And make release/delivery of the our product more visible. It drives the development team and other departments’s ambition.

Jenkins: pipeline/delivery pipeline and we can use shell script in the configuration. Jenkins has a lot of plugins.

TeamCity: We can run automaton tests.

For Jenkins: It needs to have less bugs. I do not how they test the plugins, but sometimes, the plugins have issues. I have no time to check where to report the issue.

For TeamCity: It need to be cheaper.

For automation tests, Jenkins nodes some times experience instability. I have no better solution yet, since I have concerns with the networking and firewall as well.

I do not know if it is scalability problem or not. In one Jenkins instance, we had many jobs and we created so many views, it is not easy to find them.

Customer Service:

I have never used them.

Technical Support:

I have never used them.

I prefer to use Jenkins more, because I have used it for a long time and am familiar with it. To me, TeamCity is OK too, but it is not free as Jenkins is. We need to consider the budget, so Jenkins finally won our development’s heart.

I experienced the development switch from TeamCity to Jenkins, and I do not know the exact reason. My current company switched from Jenkins to circleCI.

When I moved automation tests from TeamCity to Jenkins, I did not experience any difficulties, but I have learning curve for circleCI.

We use AWS codepipeline + jenkins.

Before using jenkins + AWS, we used CircleCI.

We use the Groovy language to maintain the Jenkins job configurations which is very convenient. I do not know if we can do that to team city or not, I have not had a chance to try yet. I love Jenkins more without considering budget and the technology trend.

Most obvious: Having builds and test tasks triggered on commit helps not to break the product.

From my own experience:

We significantly reduced build times of large projects (more than 80k lines of Scala code) using build time on Jenkins as a time sample. It reduced the developer write-test-commit cycle time, and increased productivity.

Integration with GitLab reduced time used for code reviews. Jenkins posted build state and code quality reports into the merge request.

Simplified build scripts: Organisation started to integrate Pipelines as a part of a build, and built a library of common functions. It simplified and made our build scripts more readable. 

Automation of chores like deployment, frequent manual tasks (like running scripts on test and production systems) reduced the time used and the number of errors made by engineers, freeing them to do meaningful work instead.

• Configuration management: It is so easy to configure a Jenkins instance. Migrate configuration to a new environment just by copying XML files and setting up new nodes.
• Programmable pipelines: In recent versions, Jenkins has a Groovy Sandbox where build scripts execute. I have never seen that powerful a tool in CI solutions yet. On other platforms you can use shell scripts, but Jenkins' solution is much better in terms of readability and portability. And given that you can create your own libraries for the Jenkins Pipelines, it becomes much more powerful and DRYer, simplifying work of DevOps and build engineers.
• Brand new Blue Ocean UI: Jenkins used to have a pretty outdated UI. Now, you can use the Blue Ocean plugin to make it nice, clean, and modern-looking. Also, it has very good integration with Pipelines (basically it is built to use Pipelines).

UI: Jenkins relies on the old version of interface for configuration management.

Developer documentation for plugins, plugin development, integrations: Sometimes it’s tricky to do pretty obvious things.

Rarely. I can remember only one time we lost our build info after upgrading Jenkins, somewhere around the 1.6xx versions.

Sometimes you have Jenkins restarting because of OOM errors.

No scalability issues. I used to have up to five worker nodes with one master, and it did not produce any slowdowns. I have never had bigger deployments.

I have never used technical support directly. The community, documentation, issue tracker, are pretty good, though not ideal.

TeamCity - It’s pretty limited in build runners, mostly targeting enterprise tech (Java, MS Stack, mobile apps) and the price is quite high.

Buildkite - An okay solution, but builds are shell scripts in general. It’s hard to maintain them. Also, I had weird issues with SCM integrations and Github.

GitLab CI - It’s coupled with GitLab too tightly. It’s pretty difficult to configure. It’s slow and requires a lot of resources to run.

As for me, I just start to use it. It runs builds, unless you need something more complicated.

Setup of commonly used plugins is very straightforward, but it can be more difficult to get it running with exotic technologies. Still, it’s much easier than with other solutions.

I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs.

I was always choosing between Jenkins, TeamCity, Buildkite, and Bamboo. Most recently, hosted solutions like Codeship and Travis CI added to the list.

For business needs, Jenkins is the most relevant choice because it can be self-hosted, the price is good, it’s robust, and requires almost no effort for maintenance.

For open source projects, Travis CI is standard.

I like it very much, and I'm actively promoting it on my network.

Take your time to get used to the management flows of the application and builds. Jenkins is very powerful when you know how to cook it.