Continuous Integration Through Jenkins

A leading platform for continuous integration and an innovative area to tackle continuous

deployment – Jenkins.

Jenkins is an open source, cross-platform Continuous Integration (CI) software tool written

in Java for the purpose of testing and reporting on remote changes in a larger code base in

real time. It lets the developers extract and rectify the defects in a code base swiftly and

automates the testing of their builds. Hudson was the CI server from which Jenkins was

forked. It is a server based system executing in a servlet based container.

Continuous Integration is an eminent software engineering practice that focuses on

minimization of the software development time frame along with applications of quality

control right from the start and at each phase of the process. There is always a requirement

for a faster and better software methodology. Due to globalization, outsourcing and many

such factors, there is a tremendous amount of pressure being built on development teams

to stay in competitive spirits and meet up the needs and challenges of today. CI assists these

teams to face these challenges. It implements the process of coding, integration,

compilation and running of all possible steps in small iterations, but on a larger frequency so

that all possible errors / bugs are detected right then. This is rightly possible only if all these

steps are fully automated and transparent.

The Jenkins framework acts rapidly when a developer programs some code and submits it to

Jenkins. Jenkins then notices the code submission and starts building and executing it in

parallel. As soon as Jenkins notices some fault, it notifies the responsible developer. The

complexity and the nature of the project decide the response time of the framework. The

main advantage is that the developer can act on the problem while it is still afresh in the

mind. There are different methods to start builds: by getting triggered by commit in a

version control system, scheduling via a cron-like mechanism, building when other builds

have finished and by requesting a specific build URL.

Benefits of Jenkins

Constant feedback

Early detection of errors / bugs

Smaller and less complex defects

Increases transparency of software

Better insight into the project

Improvised predictability

Key Features of Jenkins

Jenkins focuses on supervising Building / testing software projects continuously and monitoring execution of externally run jobs on a regular basis.

SPEC INDIA has its own diverse experience in all the flavours of Java based technologies and Java web application development. We provide complete back-to-back solutions and services utilizing the entire spectrum of Java technologies, framework, servers, architecture and tools, Jenkins being primarily one of them. Do contact us at lead@spec-india.com for further discussions.

Easy Installation Distributed Builds Email / IM / RSS

Integration

Plug in support Change Set support Ease of

configuration

JUnit test reporting File fingerprinting