This relates to JENKINS-19760 and JENKINS-31209 resolved by https://github.com/jenkinsci/jenkins/pull/4209 where build description in build history widget is no longer truncated. A regression of this is that for elaborate build descriptions the build history widget becomes unusable.

The change did not sit well with our organization as our build descriptions are quite extensive. We use groovy code to parse log output which results in a big html blob containing details about versions, servers, errors, warns git commit and details, related jira issues etc. This html is then used as build description which results in nice reports when the user views the job details:

The issue after the change related to JENKINS-19760 and JENKINS-31209 is that this full html report is also displayed in the build history widget which practically makes the widget unusable:

Possible solutions:

• Have truncation length (maxDescrLength) configurable.
• Possibility to hide build description in build history widget.