Today we are announcing the first release of the CloudBees Jenkins X Distribution. It’s a battle-tested, preconfigured ready-to-go package for Jenkins X that you can count on today. We’ll vouch for it with support and documentation, and evolve it at a predictable and well-tested cadence.
That’s a big deal for us and for the Jenkins X community, and we’ll talk here about what it is, what it means, and how it impacts future Jenkins X open source development. Don’t worry, though – it’s all good news.
What is CloudBees Jenkins X Distribution?
Jenkins X is growing and evolving, rapidly. Every day it gets more stable, works better and does even more cool new stuff. The OSS community emerging around Jenkins X continues to grow and we want to see that accelerate even more. Open-source standards are good for the industry, and we believe next-gen CI/CD should be as community-driven and as open as Jenkins has been for the last 15 years.
All that said – some organizations need to rely on something today. They need to know if and when the bits will change and what the change is. They need to know that what worked today will still work next month, where to get help and information and who to count on when they’re picking a tool to power their business.
We’re creating the CloudBees Jenkins X Distribution to give teams who want to use Jenkins X but can’t go all-in on keeping up with the fast-paced open-source project. We feel this enables teams to use Jenkins X to solve their critical daily needs without limiting community innovation and participation.
What’s in it, what’s not and where can I get it?
The CloudBees Jenkins X Distribution doesn’t do everything Jenkins X does – it takes the most mature and critical bits, tests and documents them and then gives you a package of a ready-for-primetime slice of the wider OSS project.
The distribution will roll in new features on a monthly basis – always tested and documented – and you’ll be able to see what’s coming and choose when to adopt it. We’ll never let any breaking changes get through unexpectedly.
For example, the first release of CloudBees Jenkins X Distribution supports Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and preview environments, but not Amazon’s Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) or DevPods. These features will come – as will lots of other cool stuff! We will always be upfront so that you know exactly what will run well and what isn’t ready yet.
The OSS project is there with more experimental features (and welcome arms) if you need one of those features sooner. You can find the full list of what the CloudBees Jenkins X Distribution supports to today, and download it, right here.
If your team is adopting Jenkins X and wants the comfort of world-class support, CloudBees will stand by the distribution. You can buy paid support plans for the distribution to make sure your team has someone to call and help you out any time you need.
How does this relate to the OSS world?
CloudBees is an open-source company, and we want to see open-source standards continue to define how teams work. The CloudBees Jenkins X Distribution is not an attempt to pull oxygen away from the Jenkins X project – it’s the opposite. We know people need a level of trust to invest in new tool choices, and we want to bring that level of maturity to Jenkins X so more people can find it, love it and participate in it.
The more people using CloudBees Jenkins X Distribution, the more Jenkins X workloads are running in companies all over the world. As a community, Jenkins X can learn from these companies to drive the OSS project, to validate strategic directions, and to get advice and support from the most mature adopters.
This is a bet on JX and the OSS world for CloudBees, and we’re excited to make it.
Additional resources
- Read the documentation to install Jenkins X
- Sign up for the Jenkins X newsletter
- Check out the Jenkins X sessions at DevOps World | Jenkins World
