Can BuildForge do what Hudson CI is currently doing?_问答_开发者

I am looking for a co开发者_如何学Cmparison between IBM Build Forge (Rational) and Hudson CI.

At work we have full licenses for BuildForge but recently we started using Hudson for doing continuous integration and automating other tasks.

I used BuildForge very little and I would like to see if there are any special advantages of BuildForge over Hudson.

Also it would be very helpful to see a list of specific advantages of Hudson over BuildForge.

I not sure if it important or not, but I found interesting that Build Forge is not listed under continuous integration tools at wikipedia.

Thanks for bringing attention to the fact it was not on the wikipedia list of continuous integration applications. I have now added it. Build Forge has been a leader in providing continuous integration capabilities by use of it's SCM adapters for many, many years. Build Forge has a strength in supporting many platforms through its use of agents. These agents can run on Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris, System Z, and many more -- they even give you the source code for the agents for free so you can compile it on just about any platform. The interface allows you to easily automate tasks that run sequentially or in parallel on one or multiple boxes. Selectors allow you to select a specific build server by host name or by criteria such as "any windows machine with 2gb of ram" from a pool of available agents. The entire process is fully auditable, utilizes role based permissions, and is stored in a central enterprise database such as DB2, Oracle, SQL Server, and others.

One of the most compelling reasons to use Build Forge is it's Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere. It allows a full integration into WebSphere environments to automate deployments and configurations of WebSphere through out of the box libraries. The full installation, patching, deployment of apps, and configuration of WAS and Portal can be performed using these libraries. To find out more, it is best to contact your IBM Rational representative.

You can use RAFW (IBM Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere) with BuildForge. It does not make sense to use RAFW with other ci servers, since RAFW requires BuildForge.

You have support for BuildForge and it integrates with other IBM software like ClearCase. Theoretically you have only to deal with one vendor if something in the chain does not work, but IBM has different support teams for their products and you might become their ping pong ball. :(

Hudson is open source (if you like that), that means you can get the source and modify it to serve you better. But the release cycle is very short (about 1 week, agile development). There is a more stable version with support available now (for cash of course) from the company of the main author of Hudson.

Hudson is currently main stream and is actively developed. I don't know how the usability of BuildForge is, but Hudson is good (not always perfect). The plugin concept of Hudson is a great plus, not sure if BuildForge has it as well.

Currently, we are using Hudson, but BuildForge was not looked at in detail.

You need to define what you would need continuous integration for (e.g. building, testing). Having used Hudson, I can vouch for its usefulness and effectiveness. There are many plugins that extend Hudson that can suit various needs. And you can't beat the price point (free).

You need to inquire as to why a BuildForge license was obtained at your place of employment. Perhaps someone on your team knows why this was done. If it isn't necessary for your needs, don't renew your BuildForge license and simply continue using Hudson.

Being a BuildForge/RAFW user, I have to object to one point stated above. It is perfectly possible to use RAFW without BuildForge. It is driven by a command line script, and you could use for example Hudson and RAFW together just fine.

A sample command would look like: rafw.sh -e env -c cell -t was_common_configure_start_dmgr

The primary differentiators IMO:

Hudson/Jenkins is more readily extensible with the many existing plugins. It has a large active community and plenty information and documentation.

BuildForge can be configured with agents running on multiple machines and tasks can be assigned to run on a target agent. Reliable vendor support.