Specify the branches if you'd like to track a specific branch in a repository. If left blank, all branches will be examined for changes and built.
The safest way is to use the refs/heads/<branchName> syntax. This way the expected branch is unambiguous.
If your branch name has a / in it make sure to use the full reference above. When not presented with a full path the plugin will only use the part of the string right of the last slash. Meaning foo/bar will actually match bar.
If you use a wildcard branch specifier, with a slash (e.g. release/), you'll need to specify the origin repository in the branch names to make sure changes are picked up. So e.g. origin/release/
Possible options:
<branchName>
Tracks/checks out the specified branch. If ambiguous the first result is taken, which is not necessarily the expected one. Better use refs/heads/<branchName>.
E.g. master, feature1, ...
refs/heads/<branchName>
Tracks/checks out the specified branch.
E.g. refs/heads/master, refs/heads/feature1/master, ...
<remoteRepoName>/<branchName>
Tracks/checks out the specified branch. If ambiguous the first result is taken, which is not necessarily the expected one.
Better use refs/heads/<branchName>.
E.g. origin/master
remotes/<remoteRepoName>/<branchName>
Tracks/checks out the specified branch.
E.g. remotes/origin/master
refs/remotes/<remoteRepoName>/<branchName>
Tracks/checks out the specified branch.
E.g. refs/remotes/origin/master
<tagName>
This does not work since the tag will not be recognized as tag.
Use refs/tags/<tagName> instead.
E.g. git-2.3.0
refs/tags/<tagName>
Tracks/checks out the specified tag.
E.g. refs/tags/git-2.3.0
<commitId>
Checks out the specified commit.
E.g. 5062ac843f2b947733e6a3b105977056821bd352, 5062ac84, ...
${ENV_VARIABLE}
It is also possible to use environment variables. In this case the variables are evaluated and the result is used as described above.
E.g. ${TREEISH}, refs/tags/${TAGNAME}, ...
<Wildcards>
The syntax is of the form: REPOSITORYNAME/BRANCH. In addition, BRANCH is recognized as a shorthand of */BRANCH, '*' is recognized as a wildcard, and '**' is recognized as wildcard that includes the separator '/'. Therefore, origin/branches* would match origin/branches-foo but not origin/branches/foo, while origin/branches** would match both origin/branches-foo and origin/branches/foo.
:<regular expression>
The syntax is of the form: :regexp. Regular expression syntax in branches to build will only build those branches whose names match the regular expression.
Examples:
:^(?!(origin/prefix)).*
matches: origin or origin/master or origin/feature
does not match: origin/prefix or origin/prefix_123 or origin/prefix-abc
:origin/release-\d{8}
matches: origin/release-20150101
does not match: origin/release-2015010 or origin/release-201501011 or origin/release-20150101-something
:^(?!origin/master$|origin/develop$).*
matches: origin/branch1 or origin/branch-2 or origin/master123 or origin/develop-123
does not match: origin/master or origin/develop