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CI in a Box

Unless you’ve spent the last several years in a cocoon you have noticed the trend of everything IT-related moving to the cloud. It’s the new SOA. No, it is the new black. Whatever it is, it is creating a fertile environment for traditional tools and techniques to find new homes in the cloud. And it is cheap.

Here is a good example: Continuous Integration. Yes, it is that “box” in Bob’s office that spams your mailbox with stack traces every day. And yes, it is “easy” to stand-up. Of course after the equipment requisition form, the turf war, the operating system, the users, JDKs, the home and backup folders, the CI server software… you get the picture.

And that’s where the cloud shines. One can create and remove instances of pretty much any environment in (almost) an instant - cool! For an effective CI environment what’s needed is the prepackaging of a CI server and the backend wiring to the cloud. Using a tool such as CI in a Box dramatically shortens the time needed to stand-up a CI instance. Currently it uses Hudson, which also happens to be my server of choice, despite recent outages of hudson.dev.java.net.

Being fairly new, the CI in a Box website has good documentation to get anyone started, although a more detailed knowledge of the principles of CI may be required for effective project setup and management.

I am excited about this promising project and I’ll be following their updates in the weeks ahead.