WHAT BLUE OCEAN ACTUALLY IS?
Blue Ocean rethinks the user experience of Jenkins. Designed from the ground up for Jenkins Pipeline, Blue Ocean reduces clutter and increases clarity for every member of the team.
* Sophisticated visualizations of continuous delivery (CD) Pipelines, allowing for fast and intuitive comprehension of pipeline’s status.
* Pipeline editor makes creation of Pipelines approachable by guiding the user through an intuitive and visual process to create a Pipeline.
* Personalization to suit the role-based needs of each member of the team.
* Pinpoint precision when intervention is needed and/or issues arise, Blue Ocean shows where in the pipeline attention is needed, facilitating exception handling and increasing productivity.
* Native integration for branch and pull request enables maximum developer productivity when collaborating on code with others in GitHub and Bitbucket.
STARTING WITH BLUE OCEAN
Below we will show you how to start using Blue Ocean. It will include instructions for installing and configuring the Blue Ocean plugin, and how to switch into and out of the Blue Ocean UI.
INSTALLING
Blue Ocean can be installed in an existing Jenkins environment or can run with Docker.
To start using the Blue Ocean plugin in an existing Jenkins environment, it must be running Jenkins 2.7.x , later:
* Login to your Jenkins server.
* Click Manage Jenkins in the sidebar then Manage Plugins.
* Choose the Available tab and use the search bar to find Blue Ocean.
* Click the checkbox in the Install column.
* Click either Install without restart or Download now and install after restart.
The majority of Blue Ocean requires no additional configuration after installation. Existing Pipelines and Jobs will continue to work as usual. However, when Pipeline is created for the first time, Blue Ocean will ask for permissions to access user repositories in order to create pipelines based on those repositories.
WITH DOCKER
The Jenkins project publishes a Docker container with Blue Ocean built-in every time a new release of Blue Ocean is published. The jenkinsci/blueocean image will be based on the current Jenkins Long-Term Support (LTS) release and is ready for production.
TO START A NEW JENKINS WITH BLUE OCEAN PRE-INSTALLED
* Ensure Docker is installed.
* Run docker run -p 8888:8080 jenkinsci/blueocean:latest.
* Browse to localhost:8888/blue.
STARTING BLUE OCEAN
Once the Blue Ocean is installed in Jenkins environment users can start using Blue Ocean by clicking the Open Blue Ocean in the top navigation bar of the Jenkins web UI. Alternatively, users can navigate directly to Blue Ocean at the /blue URL for their Jenkins environment, for example http://JENKINS_URL/blue.
FINAL WORD
Blue Ocean is an entirely a new, modern, and fun way for developers to use Jenkins that has been built from the ground level to help teams of any size with an approach of Continuous Delivery. It can be installed as a plugin for Jenkins and can be integrated with Jenkins Pipeline. Since the start of the beta at Jenkins World 2016 in September, there are now over 7400+ installations making use of Blue Ocean.