Multibranch Filter

Multibranch Filter Plugin adds a multibranch pipeline SCMSource trait that excludes branches which have been inactive for a configurable number of days and, optionally, tags older than 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 and tags.

Why I created this:

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

Key behaviors:

• Inactivity is based on the branch discovery probe's lastModified() value. For Git, this is the commit timestamp of the HEAD revision and is read from the scan-wide Git fetch rather than by creating a separate file-system checkout per branch.
• Tag age is based on the tag head's timestamp as reported by the SCM. For Git, this is the commit timestamp of the tagged commit.
• Deny list takes precedence over allow list. Both lists apply to branch and tag names.
• Change requests 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 and old tags
3. Configure the fields:
   • Exclude branches older than (days): number of days without activity before a branch is excluded. Set to 0 to disable branch inactivity filtering.
   • Exclude tags older than (days): age in days after which a tag is excluded. Set to 0 (default) to keep all tags. Tags must also be discovered by the branch source (e.g. the Discover tags behavior).
   • Allow list: newline-separated regular expressions to always include.
   • Deny list: newline-separated regular expressions to always exclude.

Examples:

Allow list master and main (default):

master
main

Exclude all WIP branches:

wip/.*

Job DSL example:

multibranchPipelineJob('X') {
  branchSources {
    branchSource {
      source {
        git {
          traits {
            inactiveBranchFilter {
              inactivityDays(10)
              tagMaxAgeDays(90)
              allowlist('master\nmain\n.*release.*')
              denylist('')
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Licensed under MIT, see LICENSE