After doing it at AgileOpen, I again had the chance to demonstrate Hudson. The attendants had all proved their CI credentials, to say the least, as they included developers on AnthillPro, Build-o-matic, and CruiseControl, of course (how many CC developers in the room? at least 6, I’d say).
I think my point that Hudson was the easy, very usable alternative, went well, but they were more impressed with the combinations matrix feature (I personally think that the killer feature is the simpleness of the form where a job is defined).
At the evening drinks, one or two people asked whether I was part of the development team, which was flattering. I guess I should consider getting more involved, but there are already so many things I want to do, and so little time! How do all these guys do?!
I was very excited when Squirrel suggested a topic about mutation testing. I had looked at Jester & Jumble before, but gave up after a couple of hours, as they are not very easy to setup, and mostly not maintained.
The idea of those tools is to make changes to the source code (Jester) or the bytecode (Jumble), and check if the tests still pass. If they are well written, they should fail when the code is changed. If not, then the code is not covered properly. Ideally, you should only have one test failing; otherwise, it means that you have redundant tests.
Ivan, the creator of Jester, was present, but admitted that he had not even used it in years. After seeing the interest of the participants, he seems willing to give it more time. Hurray!
Check out my notes on the conference wiki.
I came back from Brussels this Sunday evening, after some visiting of the city. The conference has been a blast, especially networking with other participants. It has been great seeing again people that were there last year in London… and sometimes pick up the conversation where we had left it! I also talked with a few people that were at AgileOpen in the Netherlands last June. I can’t wait to see them all a third time in 2008.
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