Is it possible to upgrade Jenkins from Jenkins it-self?

Question

On Manage Jenkins I've a message that:

New version of Jenkins (2.47) is available for download (changelog).

Is there any way of upgrading Jenkins from the GUI similar as it's done for the plugins?

I'm using Jenkins ver. 2.43 on Linux.

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible. In Windows, this is what I see when there is a new version available:

When you click the Upgrade Automatically button, Jenkins downloads and install the new war file itself.

Please, check Jenkins wiki for further details. There are some problems if you installed Jenkins from a Debian package.

If you run Jenkins with java -jar jenkins.war, Jenkins will be able to update itself from the Manage Jenkins page. This is the simplest way to do automatic upgrades.

*nix/Mac

If you've installed via the OS X installer, the jenkins running the process does not own the .war file. To get auto-upgrade working, just fix the permissions so the jenkins user can write the WAR (in /Applications/Jenkins).

Debian Package

Using the Upgrade-Button from within Jenkins (available since 1.318) will not work if Jenkins was installed from a Debian package (results in permission denied errors when trying to download the new WAR file)!

Windows Auto-Upgrade

If you install Jenkins as a Windows service, Jenkins will be able to update itself from the Manage Jenkins page.

Answer 2

You can overwrite the existing jenkins.war file with the new one and then restart Jenkins.

This file is usually located in /usr/share/jenkins.

If this is not the case for your system, in Manage Jenkins -> System Information, it will display the path to the .war file under executable-war.