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Underappreciated Software: Hudson, a continouous integration server

posted 07:52PM Jan 31, 2007 with tags continuousintegration hudson opensource softwarequality by Lars Trieloff

For one week we (Mindquarry) are now using Hudson as a continuous integration server. It replaces our old CruiseControl installation and so far I am very satisfied with Hudson's performance: It was very easy to setup:
  1. install Apache Tomcat 5.5
  2. download hudson.war
  3. start tomcat
With Hudson's web-based administration user interface I could setup tasks for every Mindquarry sub-project without editing configuration files, everything I needed was pointing Hudson to the Subversion URL and enter the maven goals. Hudson sends e-mails to everyone who broke the build and the project manager, creates RSS feeds, has a nice user interface and just works.

It is not as feature rich as some other continuous integration systems listed on the Continuous Integration Server Feature Matrix, it's Maven integration is not as deep as Continuum's but it does its job, is easy to setup and offers a clean and friendly user interface.

In fact, in the beginning of the Hudson project, it was heavily inspired by DamageControl, a Ruby-based Continuous Integration Server project that I contributed to, but evolved into a stable and useful project of its own.

| Comments[5]

Comments:

Our Hudson server is at http://internal.mindquarry.com/hudson/ where it creates snapshots of the Mindquarry Collaboration Server (in pre-release stage).

Posted by Lars Trieloff on January 31, 2007 at 07:54 PM CET #

You might also take a look at Parabuild. Here is a live Parabuild instance hosting continuous integration builds for open source projects.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Slava Imeshev

Posted by Slava Imeshev on February 01, 2007 at 07:13 AM CET #

If you are looking for CI tool for Ruby project I recommend you Cerberus (http://cerberus.rubyforge.org). We are successfully using it for ours projects.

Posted by Gleb Vadimov on February 01, 2007 at 09:06 AM CET #

Did you check out luntbuild (http://luntbuild.javaforge.com/) before deciding on Hudson? If yes, how do they compare?

Posted by Henning Schmiedehausen on February 01, 2007 at 12:52 PM CET #

Hi Slava, thanks for the recommendation. Parabuild looks very professional and I like the statistics run-up for a project, a feature hudson does not offer.

Hi Gleb, I did not know Cerberus before. We have currently only one Ruby-based project at Mindquarry, so it is not an option for now, but I have added it to my bookmarks.

Hi Henning, I did not check out luntbuild before. I just did a small test installation of Hudson and was instantly impressed by the ease of use and simplicity compared to our old Cruise Control installation, this is why I blogged it. It is by no means a complete feature review. For this purpose the Continuous Integration Server Feature Matrix is always a good starting point.

Posted by Lars Trieloff on February 03, 2007 at 10:46 PM CET #

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