Jenkins is a well-known open-source source, integration tool to power PHP projects. It’s an exceptionally reliable tool that helps developers verify their projects to meet the quality standards. Being an integration tool, it removes complexities and make it easier for the webmasters to stay agile always. It provides relevant support and sophisticated integration technologies to make the process smooth and productive.
Jenkin is extremely helpful in the way it provides developers a way to automate the development process via “Jobs”. When integrated with PHP, it benefits developers through an automatic process where project cloning can be done efficiently with the help of Composer. Not only this, it also comes packed with a robust plugin collection to aid developers in building competitive projects. The plugin integration is something which adds dimension to Jenkin, wherein it can read programs that are written in a different language. With the help of plugins, the facilities like email extensions and upstream committers can also be leveraged.
In this post, we are focusing on some best in class Jenkin plugins that help enterprises and PHP developers around the world to develop productive PHP powered projects with ease. All the plugins are highly efficient and speed the process of project development.
Build Flow
Build Flow is a dynamic Jenkins plugin that helps you manage and handle complicated workflows. The plugin is extremely helpful in the way it helps you define an upper level Flow item to systematically organize job orchestration and link up rules, via a dedicated DSL. This DSL allows the flow definition to appear in the most comprehensible manner. Main Jobs are not aware of anything about the pipeline as everything is externalized to the flow.
The only drawback of this plugin is its inability to provide enough support to the graphical visualization. However, there is also a plugin called Build Graph but it’s not being developed primarily for this purpose. If you are not interested in graph view, then Build Flow is a plugin you can definitely think of.
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Build+Flow+Plugin
xUnit
xUnit is a robust plugin which is helpful in publishing and verifying the test results, which are executed using the Jenkins testing tools. The plugin is also a resourceful option for tracking and recording xUnit tests and highlight them as stable or fail according to the threshold values displayed by them.
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/xUnit+Plugin
Crap4J Plugin
Crap4J is all what you need when you need to read all the “crappy methods” on the basis of the trend reports generated by Jenkin. The plugin is a reliable choice to gain an in-depth understanding of the crap percentages and also about the current changes. It’s a recommended plugin as it gives it users an idea about the relevant tricks or methods they should adopt while doing a project.
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Crap4J+Plugin
Build Monitor
Visibility is one of the most critical aspect of Jenkins CI tool. Being a part of collective ownership, it is said that when something breaks or glitches occur, some parts of CI lose their consistency. So, to project it on the monitor, Build Monitor is a plugin which comes to the mind. Build Monitor plugin offers you a reliable solution to have a highly visible view of the status of some specific Jenkins jobs. It has the ability to accommodate varied screen sizes and it’s capable of working as an Extreme Feedback device which can be displayed in a way that’s suitable for public view.
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Build+Monitor+Plugin
Build Name Setter
Every Build comes packed with its own build number, but there are times when it becomes extremely tricky to recognize a specific build with a build number. During the process varieties of build are executed accompanied by an update from revision number via source code. So, it’s the revision number which could be used as identifiers. Therefore, to get the revision number, Build Name Setter plugin comes handy. The plugin will make convenient for you to identify builds by revision number.
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Build+Name+Setter+Plugin
Checkstyle
Checkstyle Jenkins plugin makes it possible for you to generate and analyze trends report for checkstyle, which is an open-source static code analysis program.
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Checkstyle+Plugin
JDepend
JDepend allows you create reports for builds. It’s absolutely easy to install. Just follow the below mentioned steps and you are ready to go.
- Download the JDepend plugin
- Enable “Report Jdepend under the “Post-buid actions”
- Run a build
View the build when it has been completed, and you’ll observe the JDepend in your sidebar.
http://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/JDepend+Plugin
Wrapping Up
All said and done, the above mentioned list of Jenkins plugins will help you accomplish a range of tasks, solve common errors with minimal pain, while promoting usability across multiple projects.
