The Tech Blog of Ken

Ditching Continuum for Hudson

I'm ditching Continuum for Hudson at work. My team has been using Continuum for about three years (for several dozen projects), and it took about an hour and a half of experimenting with Hudson for me to make the decision to switch us over.

Problems with Continuum
- very slow performance
- long standing bugs
- unstable (crashes after a week or two), loses track of child processes
- long release cycles, not much change between releases
- small team of committers (seemingly spread very thin between other Apache projects)
- small community, relatively small installed base
- antiquated code base (Struts, JDO)
- unintuitive UI, poor documentation
- migration issues (I had several failed attempts at migrating between versions)
- no plugins and little customization
- no reporting functionality

My team kind of hung in there with Continuum for a while, partly because of inertia, but primarily because I somehow had the mistaken impression that Hudson did not have good Maven integration. It turns out that the Maven support in Hudson is actually pretty good.

Hudson is so good overall that the Continuum folks should probably just pack it in and focus their efforts elsewhere. (It is a little telling that the Maven guys at Sonatype use Hudson instead of Continuum.)

Great things about Hudson
- it just works, with very simple configuration
- seems very stable so far
- automatic build dependency triggers
- short release cycles (several per month)
- huge set of plugins
- large and active community
- full time developer at Sun (Kohsuke is the man!)
- distributed build support (build cluster)
- good Maven integration
- trend reports for junit, checkstyle, findbugs, etc.

The best thing about Hudson is the ease of use. It just works. (You can even launch it via WebStart to play around with it.) There's no database or any XML to mess around with, everything is configurable through the UI. You can even make Hudson upgrade itself through the web interface!

The second really great thing about Hudson is the large selection of cool and useful plugins. There is support for all of the major VCSes and lots of different notifiers, as well as plugins to customize the build process. There are also some are some very innovative plugins like the Amazon EC2 plugin to use the Amazon "cloud" as your build cluster. Of course, there is always some room for improvement.

The few things that are better with Continuum
- "build environment" concept
- globally configurable schedules
- better Maven integration in a few areas

I had the opportunity to meet Kohsuke Kawaguchi, the creator and leader of the Hudson project, at JavaOne 2009. Kohsuke is one of those rare developers who is clearly quite brilliant but also very friendly and welcoming at the same time. If Hudson had a BDFL, he would definitely be it.

Related Links

• Continuous Integration in the Cloud with Hudson (presentation at JavaOne 2009) - http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dws34c6_0ck3nzbcq
• Continuous Integration with Hudson (JavaWorld) - http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-12-2008/jw-12-hudson-ci.html

Technorati Tags: build, continuous integration, hudson, maven

Tip: How to set maven heap size

This is one of those things that I keep having to Google.

If you are getting an OutOfMemoryError ("Java heap space") when running Maven from the command line, set an environment variable to increase the heap size.

export MAVEN_OPTS=-Xmx512m

Technorati Tags: java, maven, memory, os x, unix

Moved!

I mapped my TypePad blog to http://www.kenliu.net. Please redirect your feed readers.

How to install Maven on OS X in 5 minutes

1. Download & install MacPorts
2. Download & install Porticus
3. Start Porticus
4. Search for "maven" in Porticus
5. Click Install
6. Start Terminal type "mvn -v"
7. All done!

Technorati Tags: maven, os x, java, sync

Two way calendar sync between iCal and GCal

Google takes us one step closer to perfect online/offline integration with iCal and GCal sync.

Set it up with my Google Apps for Domains and synched up three calendars. Tried some edits on both sides and they sync up nicely. Thanks Google (and Apple). Now I can use iCal on my Mac and GCal everywhere else (like at work).

I was going to spend money on a commercial solution like BusySync or Spanning Sync, but both had some fundamental turn-offs. Thanks Google (and Apple, for CalDAV).

Technorati Tags: calendar, google, mac, sync

Canon MP530 wakes from the dead

I love my Canon MP530 multi-function printer. I bought it because I just wanted to have a printer that could send faxes, but surprisingly it's become one of my favorite household gadgets.

A few great features:
- Duplex printing
- Batch scanning with the sheet feeder
- Duplex scanning (scan a stack, then flip it, software fixes the order)
- Scans legal sized documents

The usability is so good that I don't hesitate to scan things, even to the point where I routinely archive household documents to PDF. Canon did a great job of integrating the scanning software with the printer. I used to waste a lot of time fiddling around with a flatbed scanner and some quirky scanning software. Without a sheet feeder, it took forever to scan just a few pages. Now, I just drop a stack of documents into the sheet feeder, hit the start button, and a few seconds later I have a PDF.

So the other day, I was pretty sad to discover that my printer would not turn on. I thought maybe the power strip was fried, but after half an hour of plugging and unplugging things, I came to the conclusion that my printer was dead and that I would have to buy another one.

Fortunately, I made a last ditch attempt to Google a solution, and found a CNet forum thread where several people people had the same problem. Turns out that this happens on some printers and the solution is just to unplug the printer for 20 minutes. Half an hour later, I had a working printer instead of a $200 door stop. I hope this post keeps someone else from owning a door stop, too.

Happy belated 30th birthday Internet!

Dear Internet,

Sorry I missed your birthday last month. You've accomplished a lot in 30 years - here's to 30 more years of success!

Ken

Decluttering 2007

things I did to declutter last year:

1) bought a label maker
2) moved the big shredder downstairs by the door (near the mail pile)
3) started a paper recycling pile (also near the mail pile)
4) sorted a closet full of computer stuff into uniform, labeled boxes
5) consistently kept my email inbox under control (thanks merlin!)
6) started digitally archiving documents to PDF
7) purged the household filing cabinet and sorted into properly labeled folders

Warning for PowerPC to Intel switchers: repartition your backup drives

Warning for those going from a PowerPC to an Intel Mac. If you are using an external backup drive to create a bootable clone of your main hard disk, be sure to reformat the backup drive from APM to GUID format. If you don't, you won't be able to boot off of the backup drive if (when) disaster strikes. APM-partitioned drives are known to cause problems with Time Machine as well.

make your own Simpsons avatar

Make your own Simpsons avatar at the Simpsons Movie web site. Not quite as fun as the one on the Wii, but still pretty cool.