This feature is convenient when you have lots of old jobs lying around, and you are 99% sure you won't need them but you can't rule out 1% possibility that you might find them necessary later.

Usage

When you install this plugin, you get "shelve project" in each job page, as follows:

You can click this icon and shelve the project. The shelved projects can be resurrected from the Jenkins top page, with the following UI:

Security

If security settings are enabled in Jenkins, shelving a project requires DELETE permissions and unshelving a project requires CREATE permissions.

Known issue and workaround

There is a currently a known issue in Core, making the tar function breaking the symlinks. Sadly, the Shelve Pipeline Plugin is using this tar function, and therefore the symlinks are lost during the shelving/unshelving process.

Up until Jenkins 2.90, this was mainly hidden from the end user, as Jenkins was silently fixing the symlinks during a build. But since this version, some changes made this issue visible.

This means that, when you unshelve a job, you will see a stack trace like this in all your build logs:

ln builds/lastSuccessfulBuild ***/jenkins-home/jobs/toto/lastSuccessful failed
java.nio.file.DirectoryNotEmptyException: ***/jenkins-home/jobs/toto/lastSuccessful
	at sun.nio.fs.UnixFileSystemProvider.implDelete(UnixFileSystemProvider.java:242)
	at sun.nio.fs.AbstractFileSystemProvider.deleteIfExists(AbstractFileSystemProvider.java:108)
	at java.nio.file.Files.deleteIfExists(Files.java:1165)
	at hudson.Util.createSymlink(Util.java:1333)
	at hudson.model.Run.createSymlink(Run.java:1866)
	at hudson.model.Run.updateSymlinks(Run.java:1847)
	at hudson.model.Run.execute(Run.java:1725)
	at hudson.model.FreeStyleBuild.run(FreeStyleBuild.java:43)
	at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:97)
	at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:421)

While this won't affect the output of your build, this is far from convenient. A workaround for this issue is to manually delete the wrongly created files using something like:

First make a dry run to ensure the script is not deleting something it shouldn't:

find ${JENKINS_HOME}/jobs/ -type d \( -name lastFailedBuild -o -name lastSuccessfulBuild -o -name lastUnsuccessfulBuild -o -name lastStableBuild -o -name lastUnstableBuild -o -name lastFailed -o -name lastSuccessful -o -name lastUnsuccessful -o -name lastStable -o -name lastUnstable \)

Then, do the real cleaning:

find ${JENKINS_HOME}/jobs/ -type d \( -name lastFailedBuild -o -name lastSuccessfulBuild -o -name lastUnsuccessfulBuild -o -name lastStableBuild -o -name lastUnstableBuild -o -name lastFailed -o -name lastSuccessful -o -name lastUnsuccessful -o -name lastStable -o -name lastUnstable \) -exec rm -rfv "{}" \;

Version History

From version 2.5 on, the changelog is available in github.

Version 2.4 (2019-03-28)

• Add back public API methods and their documentation (JENKINS-56181)

• Allow users with Delete rights to shelve a project (JENKINS-55462)

Version 2.3 (2019-03-10)

• Fix an issue with shelving project not working without the (optional) Folder plugin (JENKINS-55331)
• Rework the shelve progress bar so that it doesn't link to the non existing /console page (JENKINS-20922)
• Reintroduce compression on shelved folders (JENKINS-55244)

Version 2.2 (2018-11-13)

• Add Support for Pipeline Jobs (JENKINS-26432)

Version 2.1 (2018-07-20)

• Take folders into account when shelving/unshelving (JENKINS-43434).
• Do not use a JobProperty to add the shelve action (JENKINS-39929).
• Failure to display the shelve icon on the job page should have disappeared.
•  Symlinks are now correctly unshelved.

Version 2.0 (2018-07-15)

• Switch development and tests to java 8.
• Bump minimum Jenkins core to 2.60.3.
• Various development third parties updates (JUnit...).
• Jenkinsfile for automated build of the plugin in the Jenkins infra.
• Fixed various issues detected by newly integrated tools (findbugs...).
• Fix security issue

Version 1.5 (2014-04-18)

• Ability to delete shelved projects ( JENKINS-11374 )
• Bug fix on updated config ( JENKINS-10544 )
• Bug fix ( JENKINS-8063 )
• Hygienic updates (rev JUnit, base plugin version, port to JenkinsRule for unit tests...)

Version 1.4.4 (2013-07-29)

• Wipe out workspace while shelving project (this saves disk usage). (issue #11023)

Version 1.3 (2011-08-06)

• Sort list of shelves projects by the project name. (JENKINS-8570)
• Allow unshelving of multiple projects at the same time. (JENKINS-8571)
• Don't display full path for archive when unshelving. (JENKINS-8759)

Version 1.2 (2011-02-08)

• Update for Jenkins.

Version 1.1 (2010-11-05)

• Update code making it compatible with Hudson 1.383. Older versions of Hudson received 500 errors because the method "getEstimatedDuration" was unimplemented. (JENKINS-8016)

Version 1.0 (2010-10-18)

• Change icon to a filing cabinet icon. (JENKINS-7817)

Version 0.3 (2010-02-27)

• Reload Hudson configuration after unshelving a project. (JENKINS-5425)
• Hudson version 1.336 or newer is now required for reloading Hudson's configuration after  unshelving a project.

Version 0.2 (2010-01-25)

• Fix shelved projects link for views. (JENKINS-5339)

Version 0.1 (2010-01-05)

• Initial release

Todo

• How to handle workspaces?
  • Shelving a project running on master works - however, the project's workspace located on the master is archived
  • Shelving a project running on a slave works - however, project's workspace located on the slave is not archived