Jenkins: OSX installer now supports the creation of it's own jenkins user

Okay, this doesn't sound like big thing, but there were some valid complaints from users that used jenkins to run their iOS and maven builds. Some of them had trouble with ssh. See https://ljnelson.posterous.com/getting-jenkins-running-on-a-mac and http://colonelpanic.net/2011/06/jenkins-on-mac-os-x-git-w-ssh-public-key.

Since jenkins version 1.449, the OSX installer provides an option to run the jenkins service no longer as daemon user. The installer is able to create a new jenkins user with it's own home directory (maven and ssh, here we come!). It should be easier to grant the jenkins user access to the keychain to allow codesigning of iOS deliverables.

Some facts about the new jenkins user:

• uid will be determined automatically to avoid any collisions with existing users
• guid of jenkins group is determined automatically to avoid collisions with existing groups
• home directory of the jenkins user will be /Users/Shared/Jenkins

Installer options

How to get rid of the jenkins installation?

I heard people talking about issues with the installer updating an existing installation (how can this be?). Some of them asked for way to get rid of the installed files. Since OSX doesn't have a mechanism to un-install files, there are only the options to remove the files manually or use some 3rd party tool (TrashMe) to get rid of the files. Since these tools use some heuristic methods to determine the files to remove, I created a simple shell script to remove all files installed by the installer. The script can be found here.
Warning: I used the script for testing purpose when experimenting with the installer. The are no error checks and it's far from being perfect. So, please use at your own risk!

Upcoming Jenkins OSX installer changes

I was too busy with other things that prevented me from working on the Jenkins OSX installer recently. Since there are some reported issues with the installer, I'm going to address them in the next couple of days. First of all I'm going to provide a solution for the "data loss" situation that happened several times. This "data loss" situation I'm referring to, is the deletion of a modified jenkins preference file. It's never funny to loose data, even if it's preference data and there were changes specific to your machine.
The other issue is to move from a daemon user for the jenkins execution to a 'real' user. The issue with the daemon user is best described here. I already started to work on this feature and I'm currently testing the feature. Currently I don't have a good solution for migrating from daemon to real jenkins user. This is something I have to find a solution for.

Kohsuke Kawaguchi provided some good documentation for the usage of the Jenkins OSX installer. The document helps to find the available configuration settings, how to display and modify the configuration settings and how to start/stop the jenkins process manually.

So, stay tuned for the upcoming, live easing changes.
Thanks

Notable changes in Jenkins OS X installer 1.427

Okay, nearly every every week there is a new version of the installer available. With every Jenkins release you will also find a new installer for OS X. But that's nothing new. With release 1.427 it's time to tell a little bit about the recent changes in the installer. What else has been changed in the latest Jenkins release can be found here. The installer can be downloaded from here.

What's new in this release?

There were a lot of changes in the recent versions, but I'm going to mention them here too (since they have never been mentioned anywhere else)

• Installation as launch daemon instead of launch agent. If you don't know the difference, here is a good explanation.
• By default Jenkins will be installed as launch daemon, but the user can choose to not install it as launch daemon. In this case only the jenkins.war get's installed. Please start jenkins on your own.
• There is a preference file available to easily tweak the Jenkins program arguments like JENKINS_HOME, prefix, httpPort, etc.
• Documentation with instructions on how to change the arguments by modifying the preference file. The documentation will be installed and is available from /Library/Documentation/Jenkins or you can have sneak peak here.

When it comes to the installation process you will find something like this. More options than ever before. ;-)

Kudos to Sami Tikka for adding the recent improvements.

What's next?

There is currently one big improvements "work in progress": the PrefPane! This will allow you to easily modify the Jenkins settings, start and stop Jenkins, open the logfile, etc.

There is no planned release date for it, but I think it will be available before Christmas 2011.

You have ideas for improvement?

Let us know. We are happy to resolve issues that could ease your life dealing with Jenkins on OS X. The easiest way is to create a new ticket here. If you want to contribute some code, you can even do this by forking the repo on github and start working on it.

Jenkins OSX installer

Two weeks ago, I started to work on a simple OSX installer for Jenkins. Last week my work was accepted by Kohsuke and submitted to the repository. Now you can find the installer for the lastest Jenkins release here.

What does the installer do?

• copies the jenkins.war to /Applications/Jenkins
• create a simple LaunchAgent property file (org.jenkins-ci.plist) and add Jenkins as a service
  with a specific JENKINS_HOME location in /Users/Shared/
• start the new Jenkins service after the installation finished

That's it basically.

You can find the installer project on github.