We are super excited to announce that the Document Jenkins on Kubernetes Project recently merged its first PR into Jenkins.io. This PR adds a new Kubernetes section to the existing Installing Jenkins chapter of Jenkins.io.
This new section describes two options to install/run Jenkins on Kubernetes, how to setup a minikube cluster on which to run your Jenkins deployment and finally a bonus segment that explains some Post-installation setups such as unlocking Jenkins, customizing Jenkins with plugins and creating your first administrator user.
The first installation option covered in this section is helm a package manager for Kubernetes whose package format is called a chart. The helm section covers the prerequisites for installing Jenkins on Kubernetes using Helm, installing and configuring helm, creating a persistent volume and service account, and finally, Installing Jenkins.
The second option describes how to install Jenkins using a set of yaml files. This section explains how to create a Jenkins deployment file, Deploy Jenkins, grant access to jenkins service, and finally access your Jenkins dashboard after installation.
Splitting the Installing Jenkins Chapter
The addition of the Kubernetes section highlighted a long-standing challenge with the Installing Jenkins chapter. It was too long and contained too many topics, making it difficult and unpleasant for most users to navigate. To top the icing on the cake and further improve the experience on Jenkins documentation users, another PR was merged into Jenkins.io to split the Installing Jenkins chapter into smaller chapters for better separation of concerns and easy navigation. This PR also redirects bookmarks that linked to the previous locations like https://www.jenkins.io/doc/book/installing/#debianubuntu using Javascript.
The image above is a snapshot of what the Installing Jenkins chapter looked like before the PR. All sections of this chapter such as docker, Kubernetes and others were lumped up on the same page making it too long with so much information thereby making it difficult to navigate or even find information on this page.
This snapshot shows what the Installing Jenkins chapter looks like after the PR. With this chapter split into smaller sections, it’s neater, clearer and most importantly easier to navigate to the section of interest without having to scroll through so much information that’s not necessarily needed.
Testing, Participating and Contributing
The Jenkins Community invites the general public to try out these documentation updates and give feedback to help us further improve the documentation. If you have any feedback, suggestions, or would like to contribute to the Jenkins on Kubernetes project, drop a message indicating your interest in the Jenkins documentation Gitter channel. You can also find the Google season of docs office hour notes and recordings for Jenkins on Kubernetes here. GSOD office hours take place twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays between 6 pm GMT+1 and 7 pm GMT+1, if you would like to be part of these meetings, you can indicate interest in the Jenkins Documentation Gitter channel and we would be happy to have you.