Software on the host

Depending on the complexity of your builds, you might need to install many different types of build tool on your build server. Remember that Jenkins is mostly used to trigger builds, not perform the builds themselves. That job is delegated to the build system used, such as Maven or Make.

In my experience, it's most convenient to have a Linux-based host operating system. Most of the build systems are available in the distribution repositories, so it's very convenient to install them from there.

To keep your build server up to date, you can use the same deployment servers that you use to keep your application servers up to date.