Continuous Integration

Last week in class, we were introduced to a yet another convenient tool called Continuous Integration. Continuous Integration is a tool that helps us stay in track with our project and reassure that the project in the repository compiles and passes all the test cases. It can also provide you with a graph indicating all of your test case results.

We are going to be using this Continuous Integration for our upcoming project. Our project is fairly big in size, so implementing this tool should help us manage our projcet and keep in track of changes and failures quite easily. We are also using the Continuous Integration tool with hudson. Hudson enables us to schedule periodic builds and tests so that we can be certain that every little changes that we made into the project does not result in unsuccessful builds or failure to pass the test cases. The idea here is that sometimes, running the test cases only once after making some serious changes to the project may not be sufficient. Instead, hudson allows us to continously build and test to make sure that the project is in a good shape.

I am quite pleased with my experience with Continuous Integration and hudson. The set up process was fairly straightforward and I was able to observe the automated build and test almost immediately. I hope to employ this tool for my future project as it is a great tool that reassures that my project is ineed in a good running shape.