Jenkins is an open-source automation tool written in Java with plugins built for Continuous Integration purposes. Jenkins is used to build and test your software projects continuously making it easier for developers to integrate changes to the project, and making it easier for users to obtain a fresh build. It also allows you to continuously deliver your software by integrating with a large number of testing and deployment technologies.

With Jenkins, organizations can accelerate the software development process through automation. Jenkins integrates development life-cycle processes of all kinds, including build, document, test, package, stage, deploy, static analysis, and much more.

Jenkins achieves Continuous Integration with the help of plugins. Plugins allow the integration of Various DevOps stages. If you want to integrate a particular tool, you need to install the plugins for that tool. For example Git, Maven 2 project, Amazon EC2, HTML publisher etc.

Advantages of Jenkins include:

• It is an open-source tool with great community support.

• It is easy to install.

• It has 1000+ plugins to ease your work. If a plugin does not exist, you can code it and share it with the community.

• It is free of cost.

• It is built with Java and hence, it is portable to all the major platforms.

There are certain things about Jenkins that separates it from other the Continuous Integration tool.