Question:

In the path HUDSON_HOME/jobs/<jobname>/builds/<timestamp>/workspace-files, there are a series of .tmp files. What are these files, and what feature of Hudson do they support?

Background

Using Hudson version 1.341, we have a continuous build task that runs on a slave instance. After the build is otherwise complete, including archiving the artifacts, task scanner, etc., the job appears to hang for a long period of time. In monitoring the master node, I noted that many .tmp files were being created and modified under builds//workspace=files, and that some of them were very large. This appears to be causing the delay, as the job completed at the same time that files in this path stopped changing.

Some key configuration points of the job:

• It is tied to a specific slave node
• It builds in a 'custom workspace'
• It triggers a downstream job that builds in the same custom workspace on the same slave node