Downgrade Jenkins Git Plugin

If you also encounter problems with Jenkins’ Git plugin I tell you in this post how you can manually downgrade the plugin to a prior version. 

Many users on the mailing list of Jenkins encounter massive problems and missing features with the new Jenkins Git plugin since version 2.0. Very significant problems relate to the check mechanism for changes in sub-directories or the missing expansion of environment variables. These are all features you get back if you migrate to version 1.5.0. Here is the guide how to do it.

To avoid side effects while downgrading the needed plugins, stop your standalone Jenkins server or the web container Jenkins is running in. Follow these steps:

• Change to the plugins directory of Jenkins and remove the following files and directories: git-client.jpi, git-client, git.jpi, git.
• Download git-client 1.9.0 and git 1.5.0 directly from Jenkins Update server and copy the files git-client.hpi and git.hpi into the plugins directory or use the upload feature in Jenkins. See attached Links at the end of the article for the right URLs to get the new plugins.
• Fire Jenkins up.

After Jenkins is started, you have to reconfigure all your jobs using Git repositories. The section in config.xml for Git has changed in Git plugin 2.0 which is not compatible with prior versions. To ease up work on configurations change every line in config.xml from git@2.2.1 to git@1.5.0 as shown below:

scm class="hudson.plugins.git.GitSCM" plugin="git@2.2.1"
scm class="hudson.plugins.git.GitSCM" plugin="git@1.5.0"

After changing these values your repository URLs are restored and most of the global settings. Specific settings like “Included Regions” or subdirectories for Checkout must be added manually.

The changes take effect if you select the option Load configuration from disk on Manage Jenkins.