For the past year, the Jenkins community put a lot of effort towards supporting Jenkins with Java 11. CloudBees helped this effort by dedicating a group of engineers to implement and coordinate this important project. The result was announced on this blog post and now Jenkins 2.164, runs Jenkins on Java 11.
We're happy to announce it is now possible to run CloudBees Jenkins Distribution with Java 11. Since CloudBees Jenkins Distribution 2.164.1.2, you can change the JVM used to run your instance. With the CloudBees Assurance Program and the incremental release in May, all plugins in the envelope now are validated against Java 11.
Java 11 support is also covered by CloudBees Jenkins Support SLAs for CloudBees Jenkins Distributions and open source Jenkins installations. This JVM migration guide for Jenkins provides required guidelines to make sure this JVM version migration is successful:
1. Backup your instance,
2. Update your plugins using the CloudBees Assurance Program,
3. Update plugins according to the list on the Java 11 compatibility page if you have any Tier 3 plugins not included into CloudBees Assurance Program,
4. Update the JVM used to start the agents,
5. Update the JVM used to start your instance.
It is important to note that with OpenJDK and Oracle JDK 11, the support of Java Web Start was dropped. This means that in the Jenkins interface, there is no button to start and connect an agent to the controller. It is now required to use a CLI to start the agents connected to the controller with the JNLP protocol. When using Maven jobs, it’s also good to know that you need to do some configurations to be able to build project not requiring Java 11. This is documented in the Maven jobs and Java versions compatibility knowledge base article. As of now, there is no Docker image of CloudBees Jenkins Distribution including Java 11. The support of Java 11 for other CloudBees products is not planned yet.
Additional resources
Download the right CloudBees Jenkins Distribution version for your business
Learn how to install CloudBees Jenkins Distribution
Use CloudBees Jenkins Distribution in the cloud