It's great and beautiful. However, it isn't yet as powerful as Jenkins Classic. So if you've been using Jenkins for a while, there's a good chance that Blue Ocean doesn't have the power/granularity you'll need.
It also switches your default GitHub links to Blue Ocean. If you only want to try it out, you'll have to tell your users to switch their Notification URL back to Jenkins Classic in their user configuration page. (If there's a way to do this for everyone, I'd love to hear it.)
Is there anything in particular is preventing you from moving to Blue Ocean? I'd love to know!
As for the Github links, as you mentioned a user can set their preferred UI (Blue Ocean or "Classic") in their user preferences easily. We do understand that this might be difficult for some administrators to swallow and are looking at a global option to turn that behaviour on/off [1]
First of all, congratulations on an excellent job with the design and UX of Blue Ocean! There's tremendous potential here.
I hate to use HN for bug reports, but since you asked about roadblocks (thank you for asking!):
For one, we use build triggers to ensure downstream dependencies are tested as well as the current project. I would have expected some kind of pipeline integration between those in BO (displaying the triggered build pipeline in the parent pipeline as a whole), but instead BO actually makes it more difficult to get to downstream builds.
- Nodes run in parallel don't have their hierarchy preserved: e.g. parallel(a: {}, b: parallel(c: {}, d: {})) all get collapsed into a, b, c, d parallel nodes in the BO pipeline view (as you can see in the bo_downstream_build screenshot above).
Can you elaborate? It's just a plugin at that lives at /blue. In my experience it doesn't remove functionality at all. You can still use "normal" Jenkins just the same.
And you can easily switch between Blue Ocean and the Classic UI at will. Just look for the exit button at the top of the screen to get back to the equivalent page in classic then click "Open Blue Ocean" in classic to go to the equivalent place in Blue Ocean [1]
Exactly what I was thinking. When I access Jenkins, after having installed Blue Ocean, I'm still greeted with the traditional UI and the "Open Blue Ocean" button.
I do see the option in my user settings page but I don't understand what it's for. What is this "notifications URL"?
Jenkins issues all kinds of links to itself via email, Slack, HipChat and Github to refer to runs of pipelines or the homepage of jobs. When we do this, we send you to a well known URL that will redirect you to your preferred UI - Blue Ocean or "Classic" Jenkins. Thats what this preference controls. I hope this helps!
It also switches your default GitHub links to Blue Ocean. If you only want to try it out, you'll have to tell your users to switch their Notification URL back to Jenkins Classic in their user configuration page. (If there's a way to do this for everyone, I'd love to hear it.)