What is the easiest way to display information on the Jenkins UI from a groovy system script?

Question

I am very reluctant to jump into having to write a full fledged plugin, and I only know of one way to inject some information onto the build status screen of a build: set the build description.

I would like to display and dynamically update a more complex piece of rendering onto the build status page from a groovy system script. What is the best way to achieve it? Do I have to write a full plugin and grok the whole stapler paradigm?

Answer 1

I had good experience with the following 2 plugins, both were used from within a pipeline:

1. The Groovy Postbuild Plugin - just use manager.createSummary and add HTML to it. I found this to be easy to implement, with great UI results - it looks like built-in Jenkins sections. This is my personal recommendation.
2. As already suggested by stanjer, The Summary Display Plugin also works. However, it is more cumbersome to use, as you need to generate a custom XML file with non-standard HTML tags in it, then add it as a build artifact and reference to it from the plugin.