Introduction:
In this article, we will see what Jenkins software tool is all about and also look in to its installation process on a Windows based machine. Firstly let us understand what Jenkins is all about and why / where this software tool can be put to use?

Jenkins is a very powerful automation platform that makes it relatively easy to automate the build process (through ANT), regression testing and also the integration. There are quite a few reasons why you would want to do this, as mentioned below:

1) It helps the developer’s time being focused on things that matter. With newer code blocks added to the same functionality, your developer doesn’t need to worry further on testing it as running regression tests with Jenkins is pretty simple. This means that developer time is not compromised with something that is not required.
2) It helps in the improvement of software quality. With Continuous integration, identifying issues caused by newer check-ins can be identified and resolved earlier than being reported at a later stage of design and development.
3) It ensures faster development, as the likelihood of any integrations issues are lesser and also the whole part of integration is also automated.
Advantages of Jenkins:
1) The points mentioned above are good enough reasons for someone not using Jenkins in their development ecosystem to use it, but let us take a look in to its advantages further to cement its requirement:
2) Jenkins is tool that is available open source with strong community support.
3) Jenkins installation is much easier.
4) Jenkins has a surplus of 1000 and counting plug-in’s support.
5) Jenkins provides a provision to create a new Jenkins plugin if one is not available.
6) Jenkins is written in Java, hence its easier portability on almost all the major platforms.

Prerequisites to install Jenkins:
The basic pre-requisite to install Jenkins is to have the Java installation proper. You can cross-check your Java installation if it is proper or not with just checking the version of the Java installed using this command.

java -version

Then download the latest Jenkins WAR file from the Jenkins download page to go further with the installation.