How to install a plugin in Jenkins manually

Question

Yes, you can. Download the plugin (*.hpi file) and put it in the following directory:

<jenkinsHome>/plugins/

Afterwards you will need to restart Jenkins.

1. Download the plugin.
2. Inside Jenkins: Manage Jenkins → Manage Plugins → There is a tab called Advanced and on that page there is an option to upload a plugin (the extension of the file must be hpi).

Sometimes, when you download plugins you may get (.zip) files then just rename with (.hpi) and use the UI to install the plugin.

If you use Docker, you should read this file: https://github.com/cloudbees/jenkins-ci.org-docker/blob/master/plugins.sh

Example of a parent Dockerfile:

FROM jenkins
COPY plugins.txt /plugins.txt
RUN /usr/local/bin/plugins.sh /plugins.txt

plugins.txt

<name>:<version>
<name2>:<version2>

I have created a simple script that does the following:

• Download one or more plugins to the plugin directory
• Scan all plugins in that directory for missing dependencies
• download this dependencies as well
• loop until no open dependencies are left

The script requires no running jenkins - I use it to provision a docker box.

https://gist.github.com/micw/e80d739c6099078ce0f3

Sometimes when you download plugins you may get (.zip) files then just rename with (.hpi) and then extract all the plugins and move to <jenkinsHome>/plugins/ directory.

Update for Docker: use the install-plugins.sh script. It takes a list of plugin names minus the '-plugin' extension. See the description here.

install-plugins.sh replaces the deprecated plugins.sh which now warns :

WARN: plugins.sh is deprecated, please switch to install-plugins.sh

To use a plugins.txt as per plugins.sh see this issue and this workaround:

RUN /usr/local/bin/install-plugins.sh $(cat /usr/share/jenkins/plugins.txt | tr '\n' ' ')

Use https://updates.jenkins-ci.org/download/plugins/. Download it from this central update repository for Jenkins.