Build history list as the main view of a job

Using Jenkins Ask a question
1

Hello,

It would be great to have the option to view the build history as a list in the main section of the job page instead of the Pipeline stage view.

We have many builds for each job and need to be able to have a clear view of the builds - the history displayed in the side bar is not enough. It would be great to have the default job view in a similar manner as the Blue Ocean build view.

I wonder if there is a plugin that provides this functionality.

Jenkins setup:
Version: 2.401.3

Thanks,
Yaniv

2

What exactly are you missing from the sidepanel?

3

The side pannel is too narrow and not at the focus of the builds screen. It’s not easy to scroll through the builds. Our developers run many builds per job, and it would be nice to be able to scroll and see previous builds with the mouse instead of clicking on the up/down arrows on the sidebar.

Also, it does not display information such as build time, button to retrigger, and possibly other details, like which user triggered the job, which branch was built, etc.

Thanks,
Yaniv

4

I’m not aware of a plugin that provides this

5

We actually have an internal jenkins library to augment our pipelines when they start with some of these details.

We install the build user vars plugin and configure it globally (very important) so it can actually work well.

All our pipelines call pipelineInit() before the pipeline {} block of our jenkinsfiles.

The pipelineInit() ‘step’ calls our custom AugmentJobDescription() which then does this:

    userName = env.BUILD_USER_ID
    if (user_name) {
        currentBuild.displayName += ' ' + userName
    }
    description = [currentBuild.description]
    // add more details like start time, etc...

    // resolve the branch name even if parameterized:
    branch = env.getEnvironment().expand(scm.branches[0].name)
    if (branch) {
        description.add(branch)
    }
    currentBuild.description = description.join(' ')

We include other standardized details such as the name of the target deployment environment, aws account, etc…

This is very useful, although not as comprehensive as what you were looking for.

6

Have you tried the BlueOcean view?

Here is an example of what the job view looks like. It shows the status, duration, how long ago it completed (hover will show you the exact date and time).

image
image1964×1794 272 KB

In this screenshot you can see the augmented displayName in the RUN column as well as the branch name from currentBuild.description that got set by our jenkins library.

BlueOcean is no longer being actively developed (no new features), but it is still being maintained for bug fixes and security so it should be usable for quite a while.

If you loads of runs it fill load in chunks (click a Show More button). I think this one fits your asks.

7

Yes, I am aware of Blue Ocean. It would be great to have the same build view of Blue Ocean in the standard Jenkins theme, since Blue Ocean is deprecated and not in active development.