Multibranch Filter

Multibranch Filter Plugin adds a multibranch pipeline SCMSource trait that excludes branches which have been inactive for a configurable number of days. It supports an allow list and deny list (as regular expressions) so you can always include or always exclude specific branches.

Why I created this:

• Hide or skip discovery of stale branches without deleting them on the remote.
• Keep historical Jenkinsfiles in the repo while avoiding unnecessary indexing/builds.

Key behaviors:

• Inactivity is based on SCMFileSystem.lastModified() for the branch head. For Git, this corresponds to the commit timestamp of the HEAD revision.
• Deny list takes precedence over allow list.
• Change requests and tags are always included.
• If the SCM does not support lastModified(), the branch is kept.

1. Install the plugin and restart Jenkins.
2. Configure your Multibranch Pipeline job:
   • Job → Configure → Branch Sources → your SCM → Behaviors/Traits
   • Add Filter inactive branches
3. Configure the fields:
   • Inactive after (days): number of days without activity before a branch is excluded. Set to 0 to disable inactivity filtering.
   • Allow list: newline- or comma-separated regular expressions to always include.
   • Deny list: newline- or comma-separated regular expressions to always exclude.

Examples:

Allow list master and main (default):

master
main

Exclude all WIP branches:

wip/.*

Job DSL example:

multibranchPipelineJob('ConfigurationManager') {
  branchSources {
    git {
      traits {
        inactiveBranchFilter {
          inactivityDays(10)
          allowlist('master\nmain\n.*release.*')
          denylist('')
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Licensed under MIT, see LICENSE