How to configure Nodejs support in Jenkins

Jenkins is a very popular continuous integration tool with numerous plugins available to support a variety of different technology stacks. One of the popular technology stacks is Nodejs, which is ideal for building web applications and backend services as it provides a great development ecosystem and easy-to-use toolchain. However, Jenkins does not provide Nodejs support by default, so this article will introduce how to configure Nodejs support in Jenkins and how to install Nodejs using manual installation.

Why can't you install Nodejs automatically?

If you search for Nodejs plugins in Jenkins, you may find many different plugins that claim to install Nodejs. However, these plugins may have some issues in certain situations, such as:

• They may not be able to find the correct version of Nodejs for your project.
• If your Jenkins instances do not have proper network connectivity, they may not be able to install Nodejs.
• They may affect your build in unpredictable ways.

In this case, the best way is to install Nodejs manually.

Installing Nodejs via manual installation

To install Nodejs manually, you need to know which version you want to install, and where in Jenkins you need to install it. Here, we will use the latest LTS version of Nodejs, which can be found at:

https://nodejs.org/en/download/

Select the version you need (we chose the latest LTS version) and download it. Then you need to install Nodejs in Jenkins to the correct location. First, we need to find where Jenkins is installed on your system. You can use the following command:

which jenkins

This will output the path to your Jenkins installation. You then need to find where Nodejs is installed in your Jenkins home directory. This is typically ${JENKINS_HOME}/tools/, where ${JENKINS_HOME} is the path to the Jenkins home directory. If the directory does not exist, it needs to be created manually.

Now you can unzip Nodejs into this directory. In our case, we will unzip into the ${JENKINS_HOME}/tools/nodejs/ directory. You then need to add the Nodejs executable to the PATH environment variable so that Jenkins can find it correctly. You can add the path to the executable to the PATH environment variable using the following command:

export PATH=${PATH}:${JENKINS_HOME}/tools/nodejs/bin/

Once you have set the PATH environment variable, you can use Nodejs commands in a Jenkins build to execute Nodejs scripts.

Configuring Nodejs in Jenkins

Here’s how to configure Nodejs in Jenkins:

1. First, you need to open the Jenkins admin panel and navigate the menu from the left Select "Global Tool Configuration".
2. Scroll to the "Nodejs Installation" section below and click the "Add Nodejs Installation" button.
3. Enter the name of your Nodejs version in the "Name" field, such as "Nodejs 14", and select the version you want to install. You can specify the tarball's URL, installation directory, and more.
4. Click "Save".

After completing these steps, Jenkins will install and configure the Nodejs version you configured and use it in Jenkins builds.

Conclusion

Although Jenkins provides some plugins to install Nodejs, they may have certain problems, such as being unable to find the appropriate version, being unable to connect to the network, etc. To solve these problems, the best way is to install Nodejs manually and configure it in Jenkins. This way you ensure that Jenkins uses the correct version in a predictable manner, and you also have control over where Nodejs is installed and configured.

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