Cron in CI/CD: Schedule Pipelines in Jenkins, GitLab, and Bitbucket
Schedule CI/CD pipelines using cron syntax in Jenkins, GitLab CI, Bitbucket Pipelines, and CircleCI. Handle timezone quirks and missed schedules.
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Tags: developer-tools, cron, ci-cd
Cron in CI/CD: Schedule Pipelines in Jenkins, GitLab, and Bitbucket Every major CI/CD platform supports scheduled pipelines. The cron syntax is consistent, but each platform has different nuances around timezone handling, concurrency, missed-schedule behavior, and how to combine scheduled with event-driven triggers. This guide covers the four most common systems with practical examples. GitHub Actions GitHub Actions is covered in depth in the Cron in GitHub Actions article. Quick summary of the key points: Key constraints: 5-minute minimum interval, UTC timezone only, schedules disabled after 60 days of repository inactivity. Jenkins Jenkins offers two mechanisms for scheduled builds: Build periodically and Poll SCM. Both use cron syntax. Build periodically fires on a schedule regardless…
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