What is difference between .hpi and .jpi of Jenkins plugins?

Question

I have installed Jenkins plugins in two ways i.e. manually keeping the .hpi file in Jenkins home directory, and installing from Jenkins front-end (Manage Jenkins >

Answer 1

Both are supposed to be identical to that extend that Jenkins is renaming hpi to jpi when you install it manually as you said.

The reason why you see both in your JENKINS_HOME is the order in which plugins are loaded when Jenkins boots up: plugin.jpi gets precedence over plugin.hpi in case both are present. This is the way the upload installation makes sure the uploaded version will override the existing one after the restart.