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It is around 10 months now that Jenkins split off from Hudson.

When looking at the project homepages I am wondering what the differences between Hudson and Jenkins in the meantime really are. From the changelog I do not realy learn much. There are a bunch of changes and the major difference seems to be that Jenkins releases more often with less changes and Hudson less frequently, but then with more changes in a release.

Are there any notable differences yet? So are there things that make me as a developer needing a CI system more productive rather with the one or the other? Is one of them more stable than the other? Is there any difference yet that has nothing to do with politics around Oracle?

What is the most notable difference from your point of view?

starball
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Ansgar
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2 Answers2

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One notable difference is that a big number of plugins moved to Jenkins. While you would still be able to use the old versions with Hudson, the newer versions depend on Jenkins already. Also new plugins are mostly created with dependencies on quite recent Jenkins versions, so you probably won't be able to use them without hassle on Hudson.

This will probably differ from plugin to plugin, some might be more compatible with Hudson than others, while still others provide versions for both tools. But if something does not work well with a plugin you will receive help easier if you use Jenkins.

EDIT: Here is an interesting link I found, not only providing some solid numbers on the different paths Jenkins and Hudson have taken, but also addressing the (non-)issue of IP that was mentioned in the other post here...

pushy
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  • Having sat on the fork for a while before choosing, I was astonished to see the number of plugins available to Jenkins in comparison to Hudson. – Spedge Oct 11 '11 at 12:50
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check out the work being done on cleaning up the code and the IP checks that are needed to belong to Eclipse Foundation. This is one of the big differentiators if you care about clean IP.

How many plugins are you using? Hudson supports many of the most important plugins independently and is working with plugin owners to keep compatibility with those that are still maintained by their owners at Jenkins.

See the JavaOne presentations that show how Hudson is being maintained and new features added. https://oracleus.wingateweb.com/scheduler/eventcatalog/eventCatalogJavaOne.do (search for Hudson)

Also check out the Hudson project at Eclipse http://www.eclipse.org/hudson/

susan duncan - Hudson PM
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  • From the user perspective IP checks help hardly anything. I don't want to put Hudson on a disk and take money for it, so LGPL/GPL dependencies are not a problem to me. I simply want to use it. – Ansgar Oct 19 '11 at 08:16
  • @Ansgar IANAL, but clean IP is not just about what the license allows you to do with the software, it's also about whether you _actually_ have the right to use (parts of) the software at all: just because the author _says_ he didn't steal any of the code, doesn't mean he actually didn't (intentionally or by accident; it happens). This would potentially make you liable as well. This may sound silly for individual usage, but it is a Big Deal in enterprise settings. So it may not be relevant for you personally, but it's definitely relevant (or should be) for users in corporate environments. – Jeen Broekstra Feb 22 '16 at 19:23