Blue Ocean

Blue Ocean is a modern, visual interface for creating and viewing Jenkins pipelines.

Blue Ocean is a redesigned Jenkins user interface focused on pipelines. It presents builds visually and makes failures easy to spot.

What it offers

  • A clear, graphical view of pipeline stages and steps.
  • Color-coded stages so you instantly see where a build failed.
  • A visual pipeline editor for building a Jenkinsfile without writing Groovy by hand.
  • Per-step logs shown inline.
  • Pull request and branch views for multibranch pipelines.

Getting it

Install the Blue Ocean plugin, then click Open Blue Ocean in the sidebar.

Example

Example · bash
# Install Blue Ocean:
#   Manage Jenkins > Plugins > Available > search 'Blue Ocean'
#
# Then open it from the left sidebar link 'Open Blue Ocean',
# or visit directly:
#   http://localhost:8080/blue
#
# The same pipeline, shown as a clean visual flow.

When to use it

  • A junior developer uses the Blue Ocean visual editor to create a simple pipeline without writing any Groovy by hand.
  • A team lead shares the Blue Ocean pipeline run view with non-technical stakeholders to show which stage failed and why.
  • A developer uses the Blue Ocean PR builds list to check that all branches have green builds before merging to main.

More examples

Install Blue Ocean via plugins.txt

Installs the Blue Ocean plugin either via a versioned plugins.txt file or the Jenkins CLI.

Example · bash
# Add to plugins.txt
blueocean:1.27.14

# Or install via CLI
java -jar jenkins-cli.jar \
  -s http://localhost:8080 \
  -auth admin:$TOKEN \
  install-plugin blueocean --restart

Access Blue Ocean UI

Shows the URL path to access Blue Ocean's modern pipeline interface on a running Jenkins instance.

Example · bash
# Navigate to the Blue Ocean interface
open http://localhost:8080/blue

# Or click 'Open Blue Ocean' in the sidebar
# of any pipeline job page

Pipeline created by Blue Ocean visual editor

A Jenkinsfile auto-generated by the Blue Ocean visual pipeline editor, committed back to the repository.

Example · groovy
// Jenkinsfile generated by the Blue Ocean visual editor
pipeline {
  agent any
  stages {
    stage('Build') {
      steps {
        sh 'npm install'
        sh 'npm run build'
      }
    }
    stage('Test') {
      steps {
        sh 'npm test'
      }
    }
  }
}

Discussion

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