Maintaining multiple workspaces for each build in Hudson.

Question

Is it possible to maintain multiple workspaces for each build in Hudson? Suppose if i want to keep the last 5 builds, is it possible to have the five corresponding workspace folders also? Currently whenever a new build is scheduled it overwrites the workspace.

Answer 1

Right now, the idea is to reuse the workspace.

It is based on the SCM used (a SVN workspace or a Git workspace or a ClearCase snapshot or dynamic view or ...), and in none of those SCM plugins I see the option to build a new workspace or to save (copy) an old one for each run of the Job.

One (poor) solution would be to:

• copy the job four times, resulting in 5 jobs to be modified for specifying 5 different workspaces (based on the same SCM configuration, meaning those 5 workspaces select the same versions in each one of them),
• and have them scheduled to run one after the other.

Answer 2

As far as I know, there's no built in way to do it.

You do have a couple of options:

• As one of your build steps, you could tar (or zip) up the workspace and record it as a build artifact.
• Generate a tag with each successful build (e.g. with the Subversion Tagging Plugin)

Answer 3

Although not ideal, you could use the Backup Plugin.

The backup plugin allows you to back up the workspace. So, you could run the plugin after every build and it would archive the workspace.

Again, not ideal, but if this is a must-have requirement, and if it works with the way you're using Hudson, then it could work.

Answer 4

Depending on what you want to do, you have a few options.

If you need the last five workspace for another job, you can use the clone workspace SCMlink text plugin. Since I have never used it, I don't know if you can access the archived workspace manually (through the UI) later.

Another option worth to try, is to use the archive option and archive the whole workspace (I think the filter setting for the archive option would be */). You can than download the workspace in a zipped version from every job run. The beauty of this solution is, that the artifacts will be cleaned up when you delete the particular job run (manually or through the job setting to delete old builds).

Of course you can also do it manually and run an copy as the last step of your build. You will need five directories (you can name them 1 to 5). First delete the oldest one and rename the others (4->5, 3->4, ..). The last step would be to copy the workspace to the directory holding the newest copy (in our example 1). This will require you to maintain your own archive job. Therefore I prefer one of the above mentioned options.