Jenkins : JobConfigHistory Plugin

Created by Unknown User (mfriedenhagen), last modified by Unknown User (robinschulz) on Sep 12, 2019
Saves copies of all job and system configurations.

Plugin Information

View Job Configuration History on the plugin site for more information.

Older versions of this plugin may not be safe to use. Please review the following warnings before using an older version:

This plugin saves a copy of the configuration file of jobs and agents (config.xml) for every change made and of the system configuration (<config-name>.xml).
You can also see what changes have been made by which user if you configured a security policy.

It is also possible to get a side-by-side view of the differences between two configurations and to restore an old version of a job's configuration. (The latter is only available for jobs, not for system changes.)
However, if you restore an older version of the config file and the new version contains fields that were not present in the older version, the restored version will still contain these fields, although they were not present in the original.

The plugin also provides an overview page of all changes. You can find it under <jenkins_url>/jobConfigHistory or reach it via links in the sidepanel of the main and the system configuration pages.
The overview page initially only lists system configuration changes (for performance reasons), but there are links to view either all job configuration histories or just the deleted jobs or all kinds of configuration history entries together (which may take some time to load, depending on the number of jobs in your instance).

Pictures

Job Config History Revision Overview

Job Diff Side-By-Side View

Config Overview Page















Interdependencies with other Plugins/ Excluding config path parts (jobs, folders, ...)

If you use other plugins, that are (automatically) changing the configuration, you might end up with a lot of unwanted change detections.

It's recommended to use the given ability, to exclude such changes by patterns. This can be done in the System Configuration or via <jenkins-link>/configure. Just add the corresponding pattern (e.g. cluster-stats) in the Input Configuration exclude file pattern:


This functionality also allows you to exclude jobs, folders or other parts of your job hierarchy:
The pattern is attempted to be found in a config file's file path. Adding "|test" to the pattern will also cause "testFolder/jobs/job1" to be excluded.
So if you want to exclude jobs, only, it might be better to enter something like "|testJob/config\.xml".


If you use this plugin together with the Global Build Stats Plugin you should add global-build-stats to the excludes in the Configuration exclude file pattern section of this plugin in Configure System page. Fixed in version 1.9 of the plugin.

If you use this plugin together with the Cluster Statistics Plugin you should add cluster-stats to the excludes in the Configuration exclude file pattern section of this plugin in Configure System page. Otherwise it might exceed your storage.

Open issues

Key Summary T Created Updated Due Assignee Reporter P Status Resolution
JENKINS-66566 Job DSL / Job Configuration History plugin creates tons of xml files Bug Sep 06, 2021 Sep 06, 2021 Daniel Spilker Artalus S. Minor Open Unresolved
JENKINS-66533 Exception: "Could not create rootDir" Bug Sep 03, 2021 Sep 03, 2021 Stefan Brausch Ian Williams Major Open Unresolved
JENKINS-62281 Exclude of node config does not work Bug May 14, 2020 Sep 03, 2021 Stefan Brausch Hans-Juergen Hafner Minor Open Unresolved
JENKINS-35421 Exception: "Could not create rootDir" Bug Jun 07, 2016 Sep 03, 2021 Stefan Brausch David Aldrich Major Reopened Unresolved
JENKINS-66251 After Jenkins upgrade Declarative Pipelines stopped working due to JobConfigHistory plugin Bug Jul 29, 2021 Aug 09, 2021 Stefan Brausch Hugo Major Open Unresolved
JENKINS-66250 cloudbees-disk-usage-simple-plugin produces lots of entries in the jobConfigHistory data Bug Jul 29, 2021 Jul 29, 2021 Stefan Brausch Marcin Cieślak Major Open Unresolved
JENKINS-55787 Switch labels from entry to checkbox Epic Jan 25, 2019 May 06, 2021 Josh Soref Josh Soref Minor In Progress Unresolved
JENKINS-55667 Configure "Job Configuration History" plugin with "Configuration as Code" New Feature Jan 17, 2019 Feb 19, 2021 Stefan Brausch Austin Dewey Minor Open Unresolved
JENKINS-64309 Usability: Relocate Comments text box button adjacent Improvement Nov 25, 2020 Nov 29, 2020 Stefan Brausch Ian Williams Minor Open Unresolved
JENKINS-63606 Unable to restore job deleted in folder (nested job) Bug Sep 07, 2020 Sep 07, 2020 Stefan Brausch Ian Williams Major Open Unresolved
JENKINS-63602 jobConfigHistory-plugin releases not showing "latest" on GitHub or plugins site Bug Sep 05, 2020 Sep 05, 2020 Jochen A. Fürbacher Ian Williams Minor Open Unresolved
JENKINS-61049 Move documentation from jenkins wiki to github Task Feb 11, 2020 Sep 05, 2020 Jochen A. Fürbacher Jochen A. Fürbacher Minor Open Unresolved
JENKINS-33998 JobConfigHistory : Job deleted in Folder do not appears in history Bug Apr 04, 2016 Sep 05, 2020 Stefan Brausch Frédéric Meyrou Critical Open Unresolved
JENKINS-39831 jobConfigHistory doesn't show nested Job's history Bug Nov 17, 2016 Sep 05, 2020 Stefan Brausch George Yermulnik Minor Open Unresolved
JENKINS-61199 Job Configuration History Plugin doesn't seem to honor "Max number of days to keep history entries" for deleted jobs Bug Feb 24, 2020 Sep 03, 2020 Stefan Brausch Martin Jost Minor Open Unresolved
JENKINS-63511 JobConfigHistory does not track "Manage Old Data" changes Improvement Aug 26, 2020 Aug 26, 2020 Stefan Brausch Gwen Georgeault Major Open Unresolved
JENKINS-39271 jobConfigHistory plugin does not track changes done inside Promotion process section Bug Oct 26, 2016 Aug 25, 2020 Stefan Brausch Raghavendra Tallam Minor Open Unresolved
JENKINS-24915 Extremely slow startup with template-project in combination with jobConfigHistory Bug Sep 29, 2014 Jul 09, 2020 Mirko Friedenhagen Marcus Philip Critical Open Unresolved
JENKINS-62696 Incompatibility of Job Configuration History Plugin with Jenkins Dark Theme Improvement Jun 16, 2020 Jun 16, 2020 Stefan Brausch Adam Richter Minor Open Unresolved
JENKINS-62612 JobConfigHistory-Plugin modifies UTF-8 characters within jobs Bug Jun 08, 2020 Jun 08, 2020 Stefan Brausch Martin Bauer Blocker Open Unresolved
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Changelog

Version 2.24 (September 9 2019)

Version 2.23.1 (August 6 2019)

  • (PR #97) Bugfix: System configs were not persisted (regression of 8e2d9dd)

Version 2.23 (July 23 2019)

Version 2.22 (June 3 2019)

Version 2.21 (May 2 2019)

Version 2.20 (April 5 2019)

Version 2.19 (December 5 2018)

  • (JENKINS-53998) Job Config History plugin should not call User.current() during startup
  • (PR #72) Use canonical user identify in case change initiator is unknown
  • (PR #67) Fix root URL
  • Findbugs fixes
  • Minor changes (Jenkinsfile, Link fixes)

Version 2.18.3 (October 25 2018)

Version 2.18.2 (September 28 2018)

Version 2.18.1 (September 25 2018)

Version 2.18 (September 25 2017)

  • (JENKINS-47089) Wiki page for JobConfigHistory has circular link
  • (PR #65) Also exclude files from the lockable resources plugin

Version 2.17 (August 22 2017)

Version 2.16 (April 21 2017)

  • (JENKINS-42464) Job Configuration History not accessible from public IP address
  • Switched unit tests from HudsonTestCase to JenkinsRule.

Version 2.15 (July 21 2016)

  • (JENKINS-34802) Exclude history collection for selected users (Note: All changes will be assigned to the next, not excluded user!)

Version 2.14 (May 09 2016)

  • (JENKINS-33641) Showing old and new job name if hovering over info image beneath operation renamed (for jobs and nodes)
  • (JENKINS-25654) Fixed: Restore Project option for Job Config History gets Oops! page
  • Merged pull request #49 (thanks to Brandon Koepke)
  • (JENKINS-34151) Add support for Pipeline projects to display config changes in build history
  • (JENKINS-30578) Error when trying to view job config history

Version 2.13 (March 18 2016)

  • (JENKINS-33289) NPE when clicking showDiffs (Jenkins Core 1.650 or higher)
  • SECURITY-140 XSS vulnerability

Version 2.12 (July 23 2015)

  • (JENKINS-29063) Switch default for per-Maven modules to false (Thanks to Andrew Bayer)
  • (JENKINS-24930) Alternating row bg colors (Thanks to Daniel Beck)

Version 2.11 (April 17 2015)

  • Avoid calling User.current() during Jenkins initialization (Thanks to Thomas de Grenier de Latour)
  • Avoid tracking changes for cloud slave as well (Thanks to Ryan Campbel)

Version 2.10 (November 12 2014)

  • Fix proposal for NPE in ComputerHistoryListener.onConfigurationChange method (Thanks to William Bernardet)
  • (JENKINS-22639) Don't record changes to AbstractCloudSlaves or Ephemeral Nodes (Thanks to Ryan Campbell and Jesse Click)

Version 2.9 (September 02 2014)

  • Fixed: Do not save config for matrix configurations (JENKINS-24412) (Thanks to Oliver Gondža)
  • Fixed: Job config change not saved for maven and matrix projects (JENKINS-24410) (Thanks to Oliver Gondža)

Version 2.8 (July 17 2014)

  • Default for global configuration "saveModuleConfiguration" changed to false
  • Fixed history could not saved for some job types if in the system configuration "Save folder configuration changes" wasn't set (Thanks to Jesse Glick)
  • Rely on Jenkins 1.548+ so we can use TransientActionFactory (Thanks to Jesse Glick)
  • Added Rest Api (JENKINS-22796) (JENKINS-22895) (JENKINS-22937) (Thanks to cfs pure))
  • Fixed Building plugin in Windows environment (Testing only) (Thanks to Oleg Nenashev)
  • Fixed wrong user link in diff page
  • Fixed: Suppress the targetType loading issue (JENKINS-20511) (Thanks to Oleg Nenashev)

Version 2.7 (Release failed)

Version 2.6 (Apr 14 2014)

  • Diff view: easily review changes sequentially (Next/Previous links) (JENKINS-21411)
  • Show Config Versions in Diff View (JENKINS-21406)
  • Add config history for slaves too (Thanks to Lucie Votypkova)
  • Folder integration (JENKINS-20990) (Thanks to Jesse Glick)

Version 2.5 (Oct 31 2013)

  • Add button for restoring deleted projects
  • Add view that only contains 'Created' entries
  • Change purging (by quantity as well as by age) so that 'Created' entries of a project are not deleted
  • Fix links so that last existing config file of a deleted job is shown (instead of an error)
  • Always save system changes. (Remove configuration option for it.)
  • Fix for 'Change History consumes extreme amounts of CPU' (JENKINS-17124) (Thanks to Stephan Pauxberger)
  • Lazy loading bug fixed. (Thanks to Jesse Glick)

Version 2.4 (Apr 25 2013)

Version 2.3 (Feb 25 2013)

  • Add option to automatically delete configuration histories based on their age (Feature request JENKINS-12233).
  • Fix bug that throws NPE when building a new project (JENKINS-16496).
  • Set "skip duplicate history" enabled by default (JENKINS-14303).

Version 2.2 (Jan 30 2013)

  • Catch NPE which appears when copying recently created job (Workaround for JENKINS-16499).

Version 2.1.1 (Jan 22 2013)

  • Fix bug that prevents building a job which has no config history entries.

Version 2.1 (Jan 18 2013)

  • Add badges which appear in the build history when the configuration of the respective job has changed since it was build the last time.
  • Change the URL parameters so that not entire paths but just timestamps and job/system configuration names are passed (Fix for JENKINS-16375).

Version 2.0 (Nov 19 2012)

  • Save and list config info for deleted jobs (Fix for JENKINS-13069)
  • Add button for restoring a previous job configuration (Fix for JENKINS-9616)
  • Improve loading time of global jobConfigHistory page
  • Change access control so that system changes can only be viewed by users with system configure permission

  • Add support for hierachical job model (ItemGroup) (Thanks to ndeloof)

    Warning

    With this version the plugin changes the location where the configuration history data is stored. This means that some data might not be found by the plugin any longer and has to be moved manually. See above for more information.

With the 1.x versions of this plugin, the job configuration history data used to be stored with each job (JENKINS_HOME/jobs/JOBNAME/config-history), whereas the system configuration history was stored in an extra directory under JENKINS_HOME. As of version 2.0, both types of configuration history data are now to be found in one directory under JENKINS_HOME. The default location for this folder is JENKINS_HOME/config-history.
Now there are two possible scenarios:
If you did not use the default root history directory of the 1.x version, but set it to an individual path on the Jenkins configuration page, the 2.x versions of the plugin should still be able to find and display the data correctly.
However, if you did not change the path and used the default root history directory, your job configuration data is stored with each job, where the 2.x versions of the plugin will not find it any longer. If you want the plugin to list the job configuration history again, you have to move the data manually from JENKINS_HOME/jobs/JOBNAME/config-history to JENKINS_HOME/config-history/jobs/JOBNAME.
This can be done with a script like the following:

#!/bin/bash -e

src=/var/lib/jenkins/jobs
target=/var/lib/jenkins/config-history/jobs

cd "$src"
# Make sure we support jobs containing space in names
dirs=( * )
for f in "${dirs[@]}"
do
        mv "$f/config-history" "$target/$f" || true
done

Version 1.13 (Jan 31 2012)

Version 1.12 (Nov 18 2011)

Version 1.11 (May 08 2011)

  • pom.xml now references correct github repository.

Version 1.10 (May 08 2011)

  • Include japanese translation provided by tyuki39.
  • Update to maven3 and newest plugin parent (1.409)
  • Fix for JENKINS-9617: Include an easy way to see the last diff.

Version 1.9 (Dec 20 2010)

  • Workaround for JENKINS-6774, JENKINS-6943 provided by John Borghi: http 500 error thrown whilst saving a job configuration although the changes are actually persisted, Save config results in IOException: Unable to delete....config.xml when "Do not save duplicate history" is selected, mostly a Windows/NFS problem.
  • Fix for JENKINS-6924: Add global-build-stats to DEFAULT_EXCLUDE in JobConfigHistoryConsts.java.
  • Added Spanish translation (release #33152)

Version 1.5 (May 31 2010)

  • Fix for JENKINS-6655: JDK 1.5 compatibility. (Thanks to vlatombe)
  • Bugfix in exception handling

Version 1.4 (May 11 2010)

  • Fix for JENKINS-5864: Plugin requires admin rights.
  • Provide the following additional features.  The configurations are optional and can be set via the "Manage Hudson"->"Configure System" link. (Many thanks to John Borghi and his team for this enhancement)
    •  Alternative root folder for storing history. This option must be used if interested in preserving configurations for deleted jobs.
    •  Setting for the maximum number of history configurations to keep (per item).  Leave blank or zero to keep all entries (no maximum).
    •  Option to not create a new history entry if it is the same as the last saved entry for that item.
    •  Allow saving of 'system' configurations - defined as those stored directly in HUDSON_ROOT.
    •  Regexp pattern for excluding system configuration files to save. Useful because some system configurations are not interesting to save. A recommended default value is provided.
    •  Enhanced UI for selecting versions to compare.
    •  Allow system configuration diffs to be viewed via the UI.

Version 1.3 (Apr 05 2010)

  • Fix for JENKINS-6163: Job Config History badge is lost with newer versions of hudson.

Version 1.2 (Feb 12 2010)

  • Replaced the homegrown version of diff with gnu unified diff.
  • Fix for JENKINS-5534: Access permissions are not taken into account when getting files via jobConfigHistory.
  • Fix for JENKINS-5607: table entry for username was empty.

Version 1.1 (Feb 01 2010)


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