Jenkins 2.190 no longer creates symbolic links inside project or build directories

Article ID:360056497311
1 minute readKnowledge base

Issue

You noticed that the symbolic links:

  • lastFailedBuild

  • lastStableBuild

  • lastSuccessfulBuild

  • lastUnstableBuild

  • lastUnsuccessfulBuild

were broken since you have upgraded your Jenkins instance to 2.190.x or newer.

Explanation

There were large number of bugs and limitations with use of symbolic links for build directories, especially on platforms like Windows. Additionally, this functionality was not widely used.

Starting from Jenkins LTS 2.190.1 Jenkins no longer creates symbolic links inside project or build directories.

Solution

The Build Symlink plugin may be installed to restore this functionality if desired. URLs such as /job/.../lastStableBuild/ are not affected, only tools which directly access the $JENKINS_HOME filesystem.