Archive the artifacts in Jenkins

Question

Could someone please explain to me the idea of artifacts in the build process   I have the workspace directory where I check out the code to compile and run my ant scripts etc  At the end  in my case  I get a jar file that s ready to install  Is that considered to be the artifact   Where should I tell my build script to put the jar file  In the workspace directory  My jar file gets a unique filename depending on variables like BUILD ID and such  how can I tell Jenkins which jar file to pick   EDIT  Okay  so i tried doing something like this     The path does not exist yet in my workspace  because the build script is supposed to create it  and of course  the  jar and  properties files are not there because they haven t been generated yet  Why does it give me an error then  Seems like I m missing something   Also  does Jenkins delete the artifacts after each build  not the archived artifacts  I know I can tell it to delete those   Otherwise it will clog the hard drive pretty quickly

User · Answer

In Jenkins 2 60 3 there is a way to delete build artifacts  not the archived artifacts  in order to save hard drive space on the build machine  In the General section  check  Discard old builds  with strategy  Log Rotation  and then go into its Advanced options  Two more options will appear related to keeping build artifacts for the job based on number of days or builds   The settings that work for me are to enter 1 for  Max   of builds to keep with artifacts  and then to have a post-build action to archive the artifacts  This way  all artifacts from all builds will be archived  all information from builds will be saved  but only the last build will keep its own artifacts   Discard old builds options

User · Answer

An artifact can be any result of your build process  The important thing is that it doesn t matter on which client it was built it will be tranfered from the workspace back to the master  server  and stored there with a link to the build  The advantage is that it is versionized this way  you only have to setup backup on your master and that all artifacts are accesible via the web interface even if all build clients are offline   It is possible to define a regular expression as the artifact name  In my case I zipped all the files I wanted to store in one file with a constant name during the build

User · Answer

Your understanding is correct  an artifact in the Jenkins sense is the result of a build - the intended output of the build process   A common convention is to put the result of a build into a build  target or bin directory    The Jenkins archiver can use globs  target   jar  to easily pick up the right file even if you have a unique name per build

User · Answer

Also  does Jenkins delete the artifacts after each build    not the archived artifacts  I know I can tell it to delete those     No  Hudson Jenkins does not  by itself  clear the workspace after a build  You might have actions in your build process that erase  overwrite  or move build artifacts from where you left them  There is an option in the job configuration  in Advanced Project Options  which must be expanded   called  Clean workspace before build  that will wipe the workspace at the beginning of a new build

[continuous-integration] Archive the artifacts in Jenkins

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