4.1. Introduction

Before you can start creating your build jobs in Jenkins, you need to do a little configuration, to ensure that your Jenkins server works smoothly in your particular environment. Jenkins is highly configurable, and, although most options are provided with sensible default values, or are able to find the right build tools in the system path and environment variables, it is always a good idea to know exactly what your build server is doing.

Jenkins is globally very easy to configure. The administration screens are intuitive, and the contextual online help (the blue question mark icons next to each field) is detailed and precise. In this chapter, we will look at how to configure your basic server setup in detail, including how to configure Jenkins to use different versions of Java, build tools such as Ant and Maven, and SCM tools such as CVS and Subversion. We will look at more advanced server configuration, such as using other version control systems or notification tools, further on in the book.