Glossary
General Terms
Agent
An agent is typically a machine, or container, which connects to a Jenkins controller and executes tasks when directed by the controller.
Artifact
An immutable file generated during a Build or Pipeline run which is archived onto the Jenkins Controller for later retrieval by users.
Build
Result of a single execution of a Job
Cloud
A System Configuration which provides dynamic Agent provisioning and allocation, such as that provided by the Azure VM Agents or Amazon EC2 plugins.
Controller
The central, coordinating process which stores configuration, loads plugins, and renders the various user interfaces for Jenkins.
Core
The primary Jenkins application (jenkins.war
) which provides the basic web UI, configuration, and foundation upon which Plugin: can be built.
Jenkins URL
The main url for the jenkins application, as visited by a user. e.g. https://ci.jenkins.io/
Job
A user-configured description of work which Jenkins should perform, such as building a piece of software, etc.
Kubernetes
Kubernetes (K8s) is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. See Installing Jenkins / Kubernetes for more info.
Label
User-defined text for grouping Agents, typically by similar functionality or capability. For example linux
for Linux-based agents or docker
for Docker-capable agents.
Master
A deprecated term, synonymous with Controller.
Node
A machine which is part of the Jenkins environment and capable of executing Pipelines or jobs. Both the Controller and Agents are considered to be Nodes.
Project
A deprecated term, synonymous with job.
Pipeline
A user-defined model of a continuous delivery pipeline, for more read the Pipeline chapter in this handbook.
Plugin:
An extension to Jenkins functionality provided separately from Jenkins Core.
Publisher
Part of a Build after the completion of all configured Steps which publishes reports, sends notifications, etc. A publisher may report Stable or Unstable result depending on the result of its processing and its configuration. For example, if a JUnit test fails, then the whole JUnit publisher may report the build result as Unstable.
Resource Root URL
A secondary url used to serve potentially untrusted content (especially build artifacts). This url is distinct from the Jenkins URL.
Release
An event, indicating availability of Jenkins distribution products or one of Jenkins plugins. Jenkins products belong either to LTS or weekly Release lines.
Stage
stage
is part of Pipeline, and used for defining a conceptually distinct subset of the entire Pipeline, for example: "Build", "Test", and "Deploy", which is used by many plugins to isualize or present Jenkins Pipeline status/progress.
Step
A single task; fundamentally steps tell Jenkins what to do inside of a Pipeline or job. See Pipelines / Getting Started and Pipeline / Using a jenkinsfile for more info.
Update Center
Hosted inventory of plugins and plugin metadata to enable plugin installation from within Jenkins.
View
A way of displaying the data of Jenkins in a dashboard style. This is an extensible object, so there are lots of different ways to list jobs, show trends, and analyze data.
Build Status
Aborted
The Build was interrupted before it reaches its expected end. For example, the user has stopped it manually or there was a time-out. === Failed The Build had a fatal error. === Stable The Build was Successful and no Publisher reports it as Unstable. === Successful The Build has no compilation errors. === Unstable The Build had some errors but they were not fatal. A Build is unstable if it was built successfully and one or more publishers report it unstable. For example if the JUnit publisher is configured and a test fails then the Build will be marked unstable.