[kohsuke]

Thanks, this is really helpful.

I need to find someone from the pipeline team to pull into this, so in the mean time, just responding to what I can contribute,

Just to make sure, I'm not saying parameters are disappearing. I'm just making an observation that less people seem to be using it. Take your example of release vs general checkin/PR builds. I see increasing people doing releases as automation that kicks in after creating a tag, or by cutting a release branch. Or the master branch is always deployable.

I agree with you that reporting capability needs to be better in order for one Jenkinsfile to pack lots of different test cases. I believe the team totally gets this importance.

The "system config DSL" you mention has evolved into "Jenkins config as code", and I've referred to it in my other comment. I think we are on the same page that it's a crucial part of a repeatable mature Jenkins setup. I think I also totally get what you mean by "unwieldy", and Jenkins Essentials in that comment is making steps to attack that challenge.

I'd love to hear from you where Jenkins X fell short for you, because I think it should speak to some of the challenges by embracing a certain best practices.