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Publishing Experimental Plugin Releases

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To simplify delivery of beta versions of plugins to interested users, the Jenkins project publishes an experimental update center. It includes alpha and beta versions of plugins, which aren’t usually included in the regular update center.

Creating Experimental Plugin Releases

Plugin releases that contain alpha or beta in their version number will only appear in the experimental update site, not in the regular update center. The experimental update center also serves regular releases. Newer releases hide older releases in all update centers. For example, the release of version 1.4 will hide 1.3-beta-2 from the experimental update center.

Note that only alpha and beta strings in the version number will publish to the experimental update center. Other version strings like proto, rc, and unstable will appear in the regular update center.

Using the Experimental Update Center

Experimental Update Center is not enabled by default in Jenkins, additional steps are needed to enable it in Jenkins.

From the Web interface

Users who are interested in downloading experimental plugin releases can go to Plugin Manager, then to the Advanced tab, and configure the update center URL https://updates.jenkins.io/experimental/update-center.json. Submit, and then select Check Now. Experimental plugin updates will be marked as such on the Available and Updates tabs of the Plugin Manager.

Once you install the beta plugins that you wanted, you can switch back to the default https://updates.jenkins.io/update-center.json update center URL. The experimental update center only offers the latest version of each plugin, even if it is incompatible with your version of Jenkins.

In Jenkins Configuration-as-Code plugin

Jenkins Configuration-as-Code plugin allows configuring update centers in configuration YAMLs. Once configured, it will be possible to install experimenta plugins and versions from the Plugin Manager Web UI.

jenkins:
  updateCenter:
    sites:
      - id: "default"
        url: "https://updates.jenkins.io/update-center.json"
      - id: "experimental"
        url: "https://updates.jenkins.io/experimental/update-center.json"

In official Docker images

Official Jenkins Docker image includes plugin management scripts which allow preinstalling plugins from the Experimental update center. See the documentation and examples here.