# How good are FreeBSD's Jenkins packages?



## robroy (Jun 17, 2016)

FreeBSD Friends,

A pal and I are using FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE, and we're thinking of installing Jenkins from one of the packages.  This'll be running this in a jail.  I see these choices:


```
% pkg search jenkins
jenkins-1.656                  Open-source continuous integration server
jenkins-lts-1.651.1            Open-source continuous integration server
jenkins2-2.0                   Open-source continuous integration server
```
This will be our first experience with Jenkins, so we haven't decided which package to choose.  I do lean towards using one of the packages instead of anything from ports, and instead of manually building it, just for the sake of simplicity.

I can remember hearing that the FreeBSD project itself uses Jenkins in some way, yet I'm not sure whether one of the default packages is being used, or whether it's based on something custom.  If it's using something custom, I'm afraid that these packages may not work really well for us without some amount of hard-earned "magic sauce," which we may have to learn about (the hard way--such as Java crashes) over time.

Might any of y'all with Jenkins experience on FreeBSD feel like commenting on my questions?


 How well do these FreeBSD Jenkins packages work?
 Are a lot of people having success with the packages?
 Does anybody have an opinion about which of these three packages is best, for a brand new installation--is newer better?
 I see that Jenkins uses Java.  I have a vague sense that Java support on FreeBSD may not be as good (or as supported) as Java on Linux (like CentOS).  If this is even true, is this likely to present any problems that we should consider before choosing FreeBSD for Jenkins?

I sure appreciate any comments people feel like making.  Thank you!


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Jun 18, 2016)

jenkins is jenkins is jenkins. It's the same on FreeBSD as from the source on their web site. How would it be different?

Packages are compiled ports. While it takes a day or a week or so for packages to appear after any port is release, the package is the same as the port. In fact, when you compile a port, it becomes a package.

EDIT: The same would be true for Java.


----------



## robroy (Jun 18, 2016)

drhowarddrfine, thanks so much for replying!

May I know whether you have experience with running Jenkins on FreeBSD?





drhowarddrfine said:


> It's the same on FreeBSD as from the source on their web site. How would it be different?



Thanks for this.  Since Jenkins depends on Java, I wasn't sure whether FreeBSD's Java options were really up to the task or not.  For instance, I see on this FreeBSD Jenkins Wiki, that several Jenkins crashes were encountered, which required FreeBSD-specific workarounds--see items #10 and #11, for example.

I'm not sure how well these rough edges have been ironed out, and how much of a "beaten path" Jenkins on FreeBSD has become.

I'm hoping that people with experience running Jenkins on FreeBSD will share their anecdotes.

Thanks again for your reply!


----------



## robroy (Jun 18, 2016)

drhowarddrfine, thanks again; I see your edited-in addition now...





drhowarddrfine said:


> EDIT: The same would be true for Java.



Thanks; I really wasn't sure about this.  I see the OpenJDK packages for FreeBSD, but I also see that FreeBSD's not a supported platform for from-Oracle Java.  I lack knowledge about the differences between OpenJDK and the Oracle JREs.  And having noted Java problems on the FreeBSD Jenkins Wiki, I wasn't sure how well these problems had been smoothed out.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Jun 18, 2016)

Note that the problems listed on the wiki are from older versions of FreeBSD but also fixed (COMPLETED). Software everywhere always has ongoing issues in various stages of repair. While Oracle may not directly support FreeBSD, that only means they don't provide a compiled binary for it. But FreeBSD has a port maintainer who does create such ports and packages to run on FreeBSD without relying on Oracle.


----------

