How to add a timeout step to Jenkins Pipeline

You can use the timeout step:

timeout(20) {  node {    sh 'foo'  }}

If you need a different TimeUnit than MINUTES, you can supply the unit argument:

timeout(time: 20, unit: 'SECONDS') {

EDIT Aug 2018: Nowadays with the more common declarative pipelines (easily recognized by the top-level pipeline construct), timeouts can also be specified using options on different levels (per overall pipeline or per stage):

pipeline {  options {      timeout(time: 1, unit: 'HOURS')   }  stages { .. }  // ..}

Still, if you want to apply a timeout to a single step in a declarative pipeline, it can be used as described above.

For a Declarative Pipeline it is adviced to use the timeout step in the options-section.

Executes the code inside the block with a determined time out limit. If the time limit is reached, an exception (org.jenkinsci.plugins.workflow.steps.FlowInterruptedException) is thrown, which leads in aborting the build (unless it is caught and processed somehow). Unit is optional but defaults to minutes.

The timeout-step has 3 parameters you can configure:

• time (required, int)

  • The amount of the timeout, if no unit is stated duration in minutes

• activity (optional, boolean)

  • Timeout after no activity in logs for this block instead of absolute duration.

• unit (optional, values: NANOSECONDS, MICROSECONDS, MILLISECONDS, SECONDS, MINUTES, HOURS, DAYS)

  • The unit for the time, default is MINUTES

Examples:

timeout(time: 10) // would lead to a timeout of 10 minutes (MINUTES is default value)timeout(time: 10, unit: 'SECONDS') // a 10 seconds timeouttimeout(time: 10, activity: false, unit: 'MILLISECONDS')

The official Jenkins documentation has a very nice example for the use of a timeout:

pipeline {    agent any    options {        timeout(time: 1, unit: 'HOURS')     }    stages {        stage('Example') {            steps {                echo 'Hello World'            }        }    }}

In a declarative pipeline you can use:

pipeline {    agent any    stages {        stage('Deploy') {            steps {                retry(3) {                    sh './flakey-deploy.sh'                }                timeout(time: 3, unit: 'MINUTES') {                    sh './health-check.sh'                }            }        }    }}