In Jenkins, how do builds know who requested them?

Question

I need to pass the username of the requestor of a build down to the script that is actually doing the work. Looking at the console output for a particular build, the first

Answer 1

I tried to use Jenkins Build User Vars plugin and notify a HipChat room that a build was started by a certain user, but BUILD_USER variable was not available to HipChat plugin, possibly because HipChat action happened before Build User Vars plugin injects the variable.

So I installed pre-scm-buildstep plugin and added:

]

// Inject environment variables using Groovy

import hudson.model.*

def build = Thread.currentThread().executable
def userCause = build.getCause(hudson.model.Cause$UserIdCause)
def userName = userCause?.userId ?: 'Jenkins'

def envVars = ['BUILD_USER': userName]

for (item in envVars) {
  build.addAction(new ParametersAction([
    new StringParameterValue(item.key, item.value)
  ]))
}