How to determine the current operating system in a Jenkins pipeline

Question

What would be the way to determine the current OS a Jenkins pipeline is running?

Context: I'm building a shared Jenkins pipeline script that should run on all platforms (windows, OSX, linux) and execute something different in each platform.

I tried something like:

import org.apache.commons.lang.SystemUtils

if (SystemUtils.IS_OS_WINDOWS){
   bat("Command")
}
if (SystemUtils.IS_OS_MAC){
   sh("Command")
}
if (SystemUtils.IS_OS_LINUX){
   sh("Command")
}

But even it is running on windows or mac node it always goes into the SystemUtils.IS_OS_LINUX branch

I tried a quick pipeline like this.

node('windows ') {
     println ('## OS ' + System.properties['os.name'])
}
node('osx ') {
     println ('## OS ' + System.properties['os.name'])
}
node('linux') {
     println ('## OS ' + System.properties['os.name'])
}

Each node get correctly run in a machine with the correct OS but all of them print ## OS Linux

any ideas?

Thanks Fede

How do you test your pipeline? – moritzg May 22 '17 at 06:20 — moritzg, May 22 '17 at 06:20

score 21 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 27 '18 at 09:55

21

Assuming you have Windows as your only non-unix platform, you can use the pipeline function isUnix() and uname to check on which Unix OS you're on:

def checkOs(){
    if (isUnix()) {
        def uname = sh script: 'uname', returnStdout: true
        if (uname.startsWith("Darwin")) {
            return "Macos"
        }
        // Optionally add 'else if' for other Unix OS  
        else {
            return "Linux"
        }
    }
    else {
        return "Windows"
    }
}

answered Jun 27 '18 at 09:55

fedterzi

1,105
7
17

I initially appreciated this solution but after I found some problems calling it outside of a pipeline. See my [anser](https://stackoverflow.com/a/61009397/213871) – ceztko Apr 03 '20 at 10:04

score 16 · Accepted Answer · answered May 29 '17 at 12:35

16

As far as I know Jenkins only differentiates between windows and unix, i.e. if on windows, use bat, on unix/mac/linux, use sh. So you could use isUnix(), more info here, to determine if you're on unix or windows, and in the case of unix use sh and @Spencer Malone's answer to prope more information about that system (if needed).

answered May 29 '17 at 12:35

Jon S

15,846
4
44
45

Thanks [@Jon S](https://stackoverflow.com/users/7509826/jon-s), that's the best answer and works perfectly. – FedeN May 29 '17 at 23:22

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 03 '20 at 10:03

4

I initially used @fedterzi answer but I found it problematic because it caused the following crash:

org.jenkinsci.plugins.workflow.steps.MissingContextVariableException: Required context class hudson.Launcher is missing

when attempting to call isUnix() outside of a pipeline (for example assigning a variable). I solved by relying on traditional Java methods to determine Os:

def getOs(){
    String osname = System.getProperty('os.name');
    if (osname.startsWith('Windows'))
        return 'windows';
    else if (osname.startsWith('Mac'))
        return 'macosx';
    else if (osname.contains('nux'))
        return 'linux';
    else
        throw new Exception("Unsupported os: ${osname}");
}

This allowed to call the function in any pipeline context.

answered Apr 03 '20 at 10:03

ceztko

14,736
5
58
73

Can you show a complete example of a working pipeline using this method? I cannot makes this work – jpsecher Apr 15 '21 at 15:06
Just declare it outside of the pipeline and call it. [Here](https://stackoverflow.com/a/65182715/213871) is an example of calling a function with a return in a pipeline. – ceztko Apr 15 '21 at 15:50
1

Thanks, now I just need to figure out how to handle `Scripts not permitted to use staticMethod java.lang.System` – jpsecher Apr 16 '21 at 13:42
Good point: depending on the permissions of the users that run the pipeline you may have some restrictions on the ability to run arbitrary scripts. I may actually have similar restrictions to yours in my setup but I solve this problem by using jenkins [shared libraries](https://www.jenkins.io/doc/book/pipeline/shared-libraries/), which is not exactly trivial to add and requires administrator permissions. Best would be find a supported way to retrieve system properties in .jenkins, which I hope it exists. – ceztko Apr 16 '21 at 16:20
This is wrong. The `System.getProperty('os.name')` will be executed on the Jenkins controller, not the node. We need to use a function like `sh` that will be executed on the node. – Chris Suszyński Jul 17 '23 at 12:32
@ChrisSuszyński good point. This answer was good for me since I didn't use controller/node mode (I still don't). Be sure to post your answer if you manage to create a functionality that works for nodes too. – ceztko Jul 18 '23 at 08:36

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered May 29 '17 at 06:14

The workaround I found for this is

try{
   sh(script: myScript, returnStdout: true)
 }catch(Exception ex) {
    //assume we are on windows
   bat(script: myScript, returnStdout: true)
 }

Or a little bit more elegant solution without using the try/catch is to use the env.NODE_LABELS. Assuming you have all the nodes correctly labelled you can write a function like this

def isOnWindows(){
    def os = "windows"
    def List nodeLabels  = NODE_LABELS.split()
    for (i = 0; i <nodeLabels.size(); i++) 
    {
        if (nodeLabels[i]==os){
        return true
        }
   }
    return false
 }

and then

if (isOnWindows()) {
    def osName = bat(script: command, returnStdout: true)   
} else {
    def osName = sh(script: command, returnStdout: true)
}

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

0

Using Java classes is probably not the best approach. I'm pretty sure that unless it's a jenkins / groovy plugin, those run on the master Jenkins JVM thread. I would look into a shell approach, such as the one outlined here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8597411/5505255

You could wrap that script in a shell step to get the stdout like so:

def osName = sh(script: './detectOS', returnStdout: true)

to call a copy of the script being outlined above. Then just have that script return the OS names you want, and branch logic based on the osName var.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

Community

1
1

answered May 22 '17 at 12:16

Spencer Malone

1,449
12
12

1

Hi @spencer-malone, Thanks for your response, but that does not work. `sh()` only works on linux and mac, if that is called in a Windows host it fails with: ` : java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "nohup" (in directory "C:\hudson\workspace\UT_jenkins_pipeline-5OP3ADAIV7CDIC63NI2TISW764YRHIQ2D5YCXCVKLV2UJ32W5XNA"): CreateProces` . – FedeN May 29 '17 at 05:07
Sorry, should have specified that msys is probably required. – Spencer Malone May 30 '17 at 12:24

How to determine the current operating system in a Jenkins pipeline

5 Answers5

Linked