Sharing configuration between jobs

Question

I have got a few Jenkins jobs. They look very similar to each other and differ only in details. Originally they were created by copying the first job. If something changes in one of the jobs configuration, then it has to be applied to all the other jobs configurations. This makes Jenkins maintenance more complex, longer and error-prone.

What I'd like to do is to pull up at least some common parts of jobs' configuration and keep it in one place so I don't have to apply each configuration change to all the jobs separately. Is is possible, and if so, how can this be achieved?

I would like not to create new project or change the way jobs are structured (upstream-downstream dependencies) as all these jobs are legacy.

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

There are several plugins that help with that. Inheritance plugin comes to mind

Answer 2

You can also have a look to the Template Project plugin.

With this plugin, you can use the builders, publishers and SCM settings from a template job.

We are using this plugin in my company and it works well :)

Answer 3

I think Jenkins DSL Plugin can be used to solve this problem too.

Accordding to its summuary:

Jenkins is a wonderful system for managing builds, and people love using its UI to configure jobs. Unfortunately, as the number of jobs grows, maintaining them becomes tedious, and the paradigm of using a UI falls apart. Additionally, the common pattern in this situation is to copy jobs to create new ones, these "children" have a habit of diverging from their original "template" and consequently it becomes difficult to maintain consistency between these jobs.

It enables a programmatic creation o jobs using a Groovy Domain Specific Language.