Implementing Continuous Integration

Continuous integration is a practice that helps developers working in groups. Basically what it does is set up a general environment that gets the source code from a repository and verifies to see if its in a working condition. It monitor's the repository continuously to check for any errors when someone commits.

We are using Hudson for implementing continuous integration. The project set up was a breeze and only took about 3-5 minutes. We set up our project in the Hudson server so that every 5 minutes, it will download the source from the repository. It will then run the hudson.build.xml file which is pretty much running the verify Ant command. When something is wrong, it emails the group to inform that an error occurred while building the project. It's very helpful because it also shows what failed and who committed the file.

Using continuous integration can be very helpful when working on a project with many committers. It tells you when the project has errors not long after you perform a commit. The only negative I see in implementing continuous integration is the time lost setting up the Hudson server. Other than that, I think that continuous integration is all positive for a developer.

-David Joel Lazaro