Why did the build break? What's making our tests fail? Jenkins was created to manage and control development lifecycle processes of all kinds, including build, document, test, package, static analysis and many more.

You can set up Jenkins to watch for any code changes in places like SVN and Git, automatically do a build with tools like Ant and Maven, initiate tests, and then take actions like rolling back or rolling forward.

Written in Java, the Jenkins software has more than 25,000 users as of summer 2010, making it the #1 open-source continuous integration tool.

Jenkins has two main functions to help you improve code quality:

1. Ongoing building and testing - an easy-to-use continuous integration system, Jenkins lets you easily integrate changes to a software project and then automatically initiates a fresh build. By integrating changes as soon as they're ready, you'll find problems sooner, reduce integration conflicts, and ensure you always have a working build.
2. Monitoring the execution of externally-run jobs - Jenkins schedules, monitors and manages externally-run jobs as well, such as cron jobs and procmail jobs, and can even handle operations on a remote machine. The tool immediately informs you if something goes wrong, so you can fix the problem right away.

CloudBees' own Kohsuke Kawaguchi is the primary developer of Jenkins; he created and fostered its large (and growing) open source community while he worked for Sun Microsystems. In 2010, Kohsuke started a company called InfraDNA aimed at supporting Jenkins, commercially. CloudBees acquired InfraDNA in November 2010 and, along with it, Kohsuke's considerable skills. Secondarily, the acquisition also brought InfraDNA's premium Jenkins product, Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees, to CloudBees.

The Jenkins user community is large and active. Jenkins boasts more than 300 open-source plug-ins to enhance its functionality. With such powerful and diverse functionality, the Bees believe Jenkins is becoming the hub of the new development lifecycle. We encourage you to decide for yourself.

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