What shell does Jenkins use?

Question

What shell is used in Jenkins when calling the shell command? I\'m running Jenkins on a Linux machine.

Answer 1

Jenkins by default looks for sh in the PATH environment variable, however the result (e.g. /bin/sh) may point to different shells. For example, on Ubuntu 6.10 or later, /bin/sh is a symlink to Dash.

So for the question "what shell is used in Jenkins ...", it depends. To avoid the uncertainty, you can: (take Bash as an example)

1. Explicitly configure shell executable in Manage Jenkins > Configure System > Shell > Shell executable, e.g., /bin/bash. (system-wide configuration)
2. Use shebang line to specify the interpreter should be used, e.g., #!/usr/bin/env bash (specific to a job)