Add option to truncate or limit test failure output (replacement for keepLongStdio)

[morlajb]

What feature do you want to see added?

Hi team,

We previously used the deprecated keepLongStdio option to reduce the amount of test output (especially stack traces) stored in Jenkins for failed tests.

In our pipelines, we already archive the full Maven build log as a compressed artifact, so we don’t need Jenkins to retain the full stdout/stderr or very large failure messages. However, with thousands of tests, the current behavior still loads and stores the entire failure body in memory and build metadata, which significantly increases the job size and memory footprint.

Could you please consider adding a configurable option (for example, maxFailureLogSize or similar) that would allow truncating or limiting the stored failure output for failed tests? This would help large-scale test suites keep Jenkins responsive while still retaining essential error context.

Thanks for maintaining this plugin and for any guidance or plans around this!

Upstream changes

No response

Are you interested in contributing this feature?

No response

[timja]

What's missing in the stdioRetention option?

You have:

• all
• failed
• none

Do you mean you want to be able to customise how much you retain? e.g. a limit under all and failed?

[morlajb]

Thanks @timja for the quick response!

Yes — we’re currently using stdioRetention = none ( default ) , but we still see very large stack traces and failure outputs for failed tests.

In our case, we already archive the full Maven console log as a compressed artifact, so we don’t need Jenkins to store the full failure text in the JUnit metadata. Some of these failure entries reach 30–40 MB each, which impacts Jenkins performance when there are thousands of tests.

What would really help is an option to truncate or limit the retained failure output (for example, keeping just the first few KB or lines) under both failed and none. That way, Jenkins stays responsive while still providing enough context for debugging.

[timja]

Ah so you mean stacktraces and error details aren't included in this limiting?

https://ci.jenkins.io/job/Core/job/jenkins/job/master/7957/testReport/junit/hudson/PluginManagerTest/linux_jdk17___Linux___JDK_17___Build___Test___doNotThrowWithUnknownPlugins/

e.g.

[morlajb]

Yes, exactly — I’d like to have the option for short or truncated logs for failed tests as well, similar to what we see for successful ones.

Right now, the failure logs include the entire stack trace and all error details, which can become very large and significantly impact performance when there are many tests.

[timja]

Have you looked at http://plugins.jenkins.io/junit-sql-storage it may help with some of this.

[morlajb]

Thanks for the suggestion! I did take a look at the JUnit SQL Storage plugin — it seems to have quite low adoption (around 0.08%) and doesn’t appear to be widely maintained.

For our use case, I’d really prefer a lightweight built-in option like the old keepLongStdio behavior — it was simpler, faster, and easier to maintain compared to setting up an additional storage backend.

[morlajb]

Thanks again @timja — I’d be happy to help test a fix if needed.