Jenkins: How to Create Builds with the Jenkins Freestyle Project
A Jenkins freestyle project is a repeatable build made up of build steps and post-build actions. You choose what runs at each stage, and there are dozens of standard plugins available to extend it. This blog walks through creating a freestyle job from scratch, pointing it at a Git repository, compiling a Java program, and checking the console output.
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| Jenkins create & build freestyle project |
The below topics are covered in this blog -
1) What is a freestyle project in Jenkins?
2) Creating a new freestyle build job
3) Configuring source code management with Git
4) Adding a build step
5) Running the build and reading the console output
1. Freestyle Project in Jenkins
A Jenkins project consists of build steps and post-build actions. The actions you can perform fall into three places: the build step, the post-build action, or a Jenkins pipeline. There are a large number of standard plugins available to cover most common requirements.
2. Creating a Freestyle Build Job
To create a Jenkins freestyle job, log in to your Jenkins dashboard. If Jenkins is hosted locally, visit http://localhost:8080. If it is hosted elsewhere, use that URL instead.
Step 1
Click New Item in the top left corner of your dashboard.
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| Jenkins New Item |
Step 2
Enter the name of the item, choose Freestyle project, and click OK.
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| Freestyle Project |
Step 3
Enter the details of the project you want to set up.
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| Jenkins Project Details |
Step 4
Under Source Code Management, enter your repository URL so Jenkins can clone it. For this example the URL is:
https://github.com/kriru/firstJava.git |
| Jenkins Setup Git Project |
Step 5
Click Add build step → Execute Windows batch command and add the commands you want to run. In our case:
javac HelloWorld.java
java HelloWorldOn a Linux or macOS agent, use Execute shell instead of Execute Windows batch command — the two commands themselves stay the same.
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| Jenkins Build Windows Batch Command |
Step 6
Click Apply & Save, then Build Now to check whether the build succeeds.
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| Jenkins Build Now |
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| Jenkins Build Successful |
Step 7
If you want to explore further, click Console Output to see the detailed result.
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| Jenkins Console Output |
Congratulations — we have executed our HelloWorld program from Jenkins.
