Using Hudson/Command-line interface

Hudson Continuous Integration Server
Website
Download
Community
Mailing List • Forums • IRC • mattermost
Issues
Open • Help Wanted • Bug Day
Contribute
Browse Source

	Command-line Interface

Starting 1.302, Hudson has a built-in CLI client that allows you to access Hudson from a script or from your shell. This is convenient for automation of routine tasks, bulk updates, trouble diagnosis, and so on.

Obtaining CLI

Hudson CLI is distributed inside hudson.war. Download it from HUDSON_URL/jnlpJars/hudson-cli.jar. In theory, the CLI jar is dependent on the version of Hudson, but in practice, we expect to be able to retain compatibility between different versions of Hudson.

Running CLI

The general syntax is as follows (the design is similar to tools like svn/git):

java -jar hudson-cli.jar [-s HUDSON_URL] command [options...] [arguments...]

HUDSON_URL can be specified via the environment variable $HUDSON_URL and the -s switch can be omitted.

The 'help' command will give you the list of the available commands, which depends on the server you are talking to. E.g.,

java -jar hudson-cli.jar -s http://localhost:8080 help

Or, in bash,

export HUDSON_URL=http://localhost:8080
java -jar hudson-cli.jar help

Extending CLI

Plugins installed on Hudson server can add custom CLI commands to Hudson. See Writing CLI commands for more details.

Working with Credentials

If a command requires authentication, you will need to supply --username and --password as options in the CLI command. Alternatively, you can login once before a series of commands.

java -jar hudson-cli.jar login --username UN --password PW

When you are finished, you can logout.

Note that not every authentication type supports these parameters for credentials. Prior to Hudson 1.373, only authentication in Hudson's own database was supported. As of 1.373, LDAP is also supported. If the CLI reports these are invalid parameters, file an issue for your authentication type and ask them to extend AbstractPasswordBasedSecurityRealm instead of directly from SecurityRealm to get support for these parameters.