Disk space management in Jenkins - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Disk space management

📖 Scenario: You are a Jenkins administrator. Your Jenkins server stores many build artifacts and logs. Over time, disk space fills up, causing build failures. You want to manage disk space by cleaning old builds automatically.

🎯 Goal: Build a Jenkins pipeline script that defines a workspace cleanup strategy. You will create a list of build directories, set a threshold for maximum builds to keep, delete older builds beyond the threshold, and print the cleanup result.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of build directories as strings

Define a maximum number of builds to keep as an integer

Write a loop to delete builds older than the threshold

Print the list of builds remaining after cleanup

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Jenkins servers accumulate many build artifacts and logs. Managing disk space by cleaning old builds prevents failures and keeps the server healthy.

💼 Career

DevOps engineers and Jenkins administrators often write scripts to automate disk space management and maintain continuous integration environments.

1

Create the list of build directories

Create a variable called buildDirs as a list containing these exact strings: "build_1", "build_2", "build_3", "build_4", "build_5".

Jenkins

# Create the list of build directories
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use Groovy list syntax with square brackets and double quotes for strings.

2

Define the maximum builds to keep

Create a variable called maxBuilds and set it to the integer 3.

Jenkins

def buildDirs = ["build_1", "build_2", "build_3", "build_4", "build_5"]
# Define maxBuilds variable
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use def maxBuilds = 3 to define the integer variable.

3

Delete older builds beyond the threshold

Write a while loop that runs while the size of buildDirs is greater than maxBuilds. Inside the loop, remove the first element from buildDirs using remove(0).

Jenkins

def buildDirs = ["build_1", "build_2", "build_3", "build_4", "build_5"]
def maxBuilds = 3
# Remove older builds beyond maxBuilds
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use while (buildDirs.size() > maxBuilds) and inside remove the oldest build with remove(0).

4

Print the remaining builds

Write a println statement to display the text "Remaining builds:" followed by the buildDirs list.

Jenkins

def buildDirs = ["build_1", "build_2", "build_3", "build_4", "build_5"]
def maxBuilds = 3
while (buildDirs.size() > maxBuilds) {
    buildDirs.remove(0)
}
# Print remaining builds
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use println("Remaining builds: ${buildDirs}") to show the final list.