Plugin versions intermediate and dependencies

[marteng]

Hi all,

I probably have some noob question on managing plugins. I have the situation that my pipeline / blue ocean plugins could be updated. Whereas most show a “proper” version as available for update, the “Nodes and Processes” plugin shows some intermediate version. Also I am not sure what happens if I only select some of the plugins to update and others not, as there is a clear warning on dependencies. This leads me to the following two questions:

1. How can I configure Jenkins to only show proper versions to advertise updateable plugins? I am not interested in the intermediate version and don’t want to see them at all in the end.
2. There are warnings for dependencies and I know I can also check them manually. But is it also possible that the dependent plugins (up- and downstream) will be selected “automatically” for update when I select a specific one? E.g. I select plugin B for update, then plugin A will be selected as it is will not work anymore with newer version of B and C will be selected as B will not work with old version of C? Or do I have to make this sure manually in the end? In the plugin update section at least it feels that I can select them independently and break everything, the official docu on plugin update does not say a lot about that.

Thanks a lot!
marteng

[MarkEWaite (Mark Waite)]

@marteng

This leads me to the following two questions:

1. How can I configure Jenkins to only show proper versions to advertise updateable plugins? I am not interested in the intermediate version and don’t want to see them at all in the end.

That is a “proper” version of the Pipeline Nodes and Processes plugin. Jenkins plugins are steadily moving to being released by a continuous delivery process as described in JEP-229.

Setting up automated plugin release

More and more plugins will use that style of version number.

@marteng

2. There are warnings for dependencies and I know I can also check them manually. But is it also possible that the dependent plugins (up- and downstream) will be selected “automatically” for update when I select a specific one? E.g. I select plugin B for update, then plugin A will be selected as it is will not work anymore with newer version of B and C will be selected as B will not work with old version of C? Or do I have to make this sure manually in the end? In the plugin update section at least it feels that I can select them independently and break everything, the official docu on plugin update does not say a lot about that.

The plugin manager page won’t offer you plugins that are not compatible with your Jenkins version. It should not allow you to “break everything”.

It is generally best to update all plugins because that keeps you in the “crowd” of people that are using the latest releases. When you choose to not upgrade a specific plugin, your configuration becomes different than others and you’re choosing to be in a smaller “crowd”. Nothing prevents you from choosing to be in a smaller “crowd” of users, but I prefer to stay in the larger crowd so that I benefit from the discoveries of others.

It is possible that a plugin you choose to update has explicitly declared that it requires a newer version of another plugin. In that case, the newer dependency will be installed even if you did not select to install the dependency.