I guess in my case, too much new all at once (Java, Jenkins, Groovy) . . . trying to swallow them all in just a couple weeks.
I guess I was thrown off by the JENKINS_JAVA_OPTIONS . . . I saw the “Jenkins” part and went looking for documentation in Jenkins about that. (There is none that I could find.) Now that I know that it is the “Java Options” for Jenkins, it became obvious I was looking in the wrong place for documentation. A minor difference in focus and in retrospect I might have made the connection myself . . . I just didn’t. The thing is what most folks use Jenkins . . . so my focus was there . . . I was lead to Groovy (and thus Java) in the back door because of Scriptler. You have a unique problem here . . . for example typically I write in C# . . . how often is it that somebody cares that my product is in C#? Never . . . But then, I don’t exposed a C# scripting interface on those applications . . . suddenly all that would have been important in a new way. As for where I would have expected to see the information . . . Google of course . . . it would have been nice if one of the first few entries in “JENKINS_JAVA_OPTIONS” had lead me to some documentation. Unfortunately, they led me instead to Stack Overflow and other question and answer sites . . . where the it was mentioned in some thread but not explained or documented. The good news . . . at least for the moment, this thread is now #2 on the Google search. <grin> Of course they have to read this thread carefully enough to see Java –help and Java –X. And . . . then again, there is another place I would have expected to find it . . . in the Jenkins docs . . . typically available off the Jenkins GUI . . . I find it odd that the “?” up there leads to a description of Jenkins search . . . a nice piece of magic and nice to have the description there, but typically that spot would be reserved for links to documentation about the product . . . They exist, on web sites and such, but not from the GUI that I am aware of. Oh the question mark leads you to the Wiki, but do you see “documentation” in the legend at the left? Nope, you have to follow “Home”, then make the leap that “Use Jenkins” it what you want to read . . . even at that level it isn’t immediately obvious there is a user manual in there. Thanks for the info. Frank From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sami Tikka Sent: Sunday, March 04, 2012 1:36 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Docs for JENKINS_JAVA_OPTIONS I guess Jenkins is a victim of its own success. Earlier it could be assumed its users knew what it means to run software written in java. Maybe the native installers have done too good a job and now people do not know what they are dealing with. Maybe we can do something to remedy the situation? Now that I have your attention, maybe you could help me and the rest of the guys who develop the native installers and let us know where you would have wanted to see this documentation? In a readme? A man page? A wiki page? Something else? Would it be enough to explain you are about to install software that runs on the java virtual machine? With some pointers to where java virtual machines are available and to their documentation? -- Sami "Frank Merrow" <[email protected]> kirjoitti 4.3.2012 kello 19.17: Awesome information Thank you . . . I would have happily given you my JVM version IF I HAD KNOWN that is what I was dealing with . . . Now that I do, I’m guessing I won’t have much problems finding it. THANK YOU. Fran From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sami Tikka Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2012 9:33 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Docs for JENKINS_JAVA_OPTIONS These are options for the java virtual machine. What kind of options you want to use and where these are documented depend on the JVM you are using. I don't really think it is the job of Jenkins to document the options of JVMs. Jenkins developers cannot know which JVM you choose to run Jenkins. Most people probably assume the Sun JVM and it is very popular. But AFAIK it is not the only one around. As you can see, it doesn't make it easy to give exact advice if people do not tell which JVM they are using. Often people also fail to mention which operating system they use. (I know, java is supposed to hide that, but it doesn't) Some things for you to study: - Run "java -h" and study its output. - The same for "java -X" - And remember, google is your friend. -- Sami "Frank Merrow" <[email protected]> kirjoitti 3.3.2012 kello 9.15: I’ve seen several post about increasing Jenkins memory with Jenkins Java Options . . . and also found the <arguments> values in the jenkins.xml file which seem to be similar. What I have NOT found is documentation on any of these . . . What exactly can go in <arguments></arguments>? This is always glibly shown like “oh everyone knows what this means”, but . . . well no they don’t. (-Xrs . . . what is that?) No, I don’t really want to know what –Xrs does . . . I want to know what all the options are and what they do . . . Googling doesn’t seem to be helping in this case; Jenkins docs probably should be able to help me, but I have yet to find the right page. Anyone know where these are documented? Frank
