Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Jenkins tries to reinvent itself as cloud-native for Kubernetes

news
Mar 15, 20192 mins

The Jenkins X project tries to modernize the CI/CD platform that has fallen on hard times

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Credit: Getty Images

The popular but troubled Jenkins CI/CD system is being reworked to support cloud-native applications on the Kubernetes container-orchestration platform. The Jenkins X project is a response to user concerns that Jenkins had lost its luster and had developed configuration and stability issues.

Jenkins X is intended for Kubernetes users who want to adopt CI/CD or who want CI/CD and are moving to the cloud, without necessarily knowing anything about Kubernetes. Jenkins X builds on Jenkins with open source tools, promoting a Git branching and a repository model. A Jenkins distribution is used as the core CI/CD engine.

Other features planned for the Jenkins X project include:

  • Automation, with Jenkins defaulting to CI/CD pipelines for projects.
  • Pull-request preview environments, to get feedback before changes are merged to the master version of a piece of software. Feedback is provided by Jenkins X as code is ready to be previewed.
  • A set of environments for each team, with Jenkins X automating the management of environments and the promotion of new versions.
  • More integrations with Git providers. Right now, Jenkins X supports GitHub but integrations are under consideration for Bitbucket and Gerrit Code Review.

Jenkins X is a project of the newly formed Continuous Delivery Foundation, a Linux Foundation effort dedicated to continuous delivery and promoting an ecosystem of interoperable tools for software delivery.

You can download the Jenkins X source code from the project’s GitHub page.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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