My quest for spreading the word about Hudson continues.
Again, I have demoed Hudson to the fair participants of Valtech Days last week. An easy crowd: none of these pesky CruiseControl developers ;-). Instead, many of my Hudson-loving colleagues were there.
This time, I also showed the code coverage plugin, as seen on the JBoss Hudson site. I am bewildered that no photographers have immortalized this moment.
One person asked whether Hudson supported C++ and other languages. Lucky me, I had discussed that with some CC developers at CITCON Brussels. We agreed that Hudson or CruiseControl Java were good enough to handle C++. That is to say, there is little to do to integrate them with the usual build system (in the case of Hudson, simply have it point to a batch file). You do lose specific Java integration, such as the JUnit report screen. Now, there *are* re-implementations of CruiseControl written in Ruby or .NET, but I do not see what justifies their existence. Maybe they do have some specific Ruby or .NET integration, but again, I do not believe that is reason enough to switch.
Update (30/10/07): I should have mentioned that there already are .NET plugins for Hudson.
Hi Eric,
One reason I see for using some re-implementation of CruiseControl written in Ruby is the need to reduce the dependency to technologies.
For example, in my current project, I use C++, Ruby and Subversion. CruiseControl.rb is the perfect fit. I do not need to install anything more on the server than what I already have. CruiseControl.rb uses a ruby interpreter and can connect to subversion. That’s all and enough.
I understand your point, but I do not entirely agree with it.
CruiseControl is just a tool. Whether it is written in Java should not be anymore of a concern than the fact that Subversion is written in C or some other tool in Delphi or Haskell.
Surely the fact that CruiseControl Java is a more stable and active project with a lot more developers and more plugins is a more objective argument? (says the man who prefers Hudson)
I agree as I never saw the need to re-invent the wheel in a different language. I dont care if a tool is written in C++, C#, Java or cobol; as long as it does its thing. I think CC could be so much more if the developers had pooled their efforts into one project, instead of working separately. I hope we will not see a Hudson.NET some day.
I tend to agree on this with Eric as CruiseControl is just a tool. Whether it is written in Java should not be a big deal.