Kohsuke has added several OS-specific features to Hudson, including authentication on Unix using the OS-specific identity/groups and remote Windows slave management. Hudson can also now switch its workspace to a ZFS file system. ZFS support is a precursor to additional features like better backups and faster clean builds and matrix builds. It will be interesting to see whether these features increase noticeably the market share of Solaris and OpenSolaris as Hudson platforms. More details in Kohsuke's note.

Georg Fleischer at Fontys University has published a Report on the Continuous Integration. The 34-page report discusses the needs from users and how different products address them and provides good material for both users and tool authors. In total 12 products are discussed, including all the usual candidates. The methodology seems reasonable, although a bit Europe-heavy. Hudson comes up very well in the comparisons and it is #2 in adoption, close behind the much older CruiseControl project.

Added - Also check Kohsuke's post on this topic, which includes a pointer to the CruiseControl downloads at Source Forge (live, snapsthot) that can be compared against Hudson's.

Kohsuke has published the first Hudson Usage Report. Plenty of good material there; some highlights... • Number of Hudson instances - 13K (anybody has any data for other CIs?) • % of Hudson's with a single machine - 87% • Most popular plugins - findbugs, warnings, checkstyle • JVM used - 65% JDK6, 32% JDK5 • Top OS used - Windows, Linux, Solaris

We want to learn more about the current use of Hudson to plan the future roadmap; this automated survey is just one of several ways to collect this information.

Uncle Bob is one of the grand names in Agile Development... and he is also now a Hudson fan -see the comments and his Screencast (thanks to Eric for the tip). Another fan is James Governor (from RedMonk); check his addendum on Hudson at the end of his Advice to Sun; he also reports that Dan @ Adobe is another fan.

And still more fans... check this Snapshot of a Whiteboard taken by Alexis earlier this week - Hudson is the #1 choice. Nice!

Are you a fan too? If so, vote for Hudson at the SOA Readers' Choice - as of right now Rational Functional Tester is #1 (see here for some background to how this happened).

My last Hudson roundup was back in May (hudson+adoption). Adoption continues to be very strong, and there are plenty of interesting links, although I didn't try to catch up with all the backlog.

Hudson is now available as an IPS package, joining the existing Debian, OpenSUSE, and FreeBSD packages. The IPS package is available here; Kohsuke provides Complete Instructions on how to install it; pretty straight forward, althought it currently requires a couple of extra steps. One of the benefits of Kohsuke doing this is that it helps us become more familiar with IPS. Also check this comparison between IPS and apt-get commands, and these doc pages: pfexec, svcadm and svccfg. Other related entries are tagged under Hudson and IPS.

We are beginning to see the results of Kohsuke's new job: as of last Monday (Hudson 1.220) Hudson includes an update center for plug-ins. Like the GF Update Center it tracks what has been installed and what's available. Like the NetBeans UC it can be invoked directly from within the tool. When I fired it this afternoon I counted 66 available plugins (web site), all installable by just checking on the tool interface.

A (clipped) screenshot of the update center page is here. Kohsuke's announcement is here. A (sometimes broken) track of tool and plugin downloads stats is here, showing increased plugin d/ls in the last week.

Enjoy!

Hudson has evolved from a hobby into one of the best CI tools available (Duke Award, Java Tools Poll, more Adoption)... all while Kohsuke worked in several key projects (including JAXB, Metro, GFv3). So... what would happen if K's had more time to spend on Hudson? :-) Kohsuke's main focus now will be the code and the ever growing Hudson community (see Rake Plugin) - and new tools and collaborations - but I expect continued collaboration with other projects like Jersey's MVC.

I think we (Sun, GlassFish and of the industry) will continue to change our practices as we better understand and explore Agile Development and I believe Kohsuke will help with this evolution. Interesting times ahead!

Added Also see Kohsuke's Announcement.

It's been a while since my last Hudson Adoption roundup, so this is longer than usual:

• Notes from JavaOne - Duke Award, Rama, Kohsuke, TS, Audience • New Plugins - Crap4J, Ivy (full list; Tutorial, Part 6) • Presentations - No Fluff just Stuff, Ireland CI (June 10th). • Comparisons - W/ CruiseControl • Adoption in France - Overview, Developpez, Valtech, Xebia, Octo • Kind Words: Geir, Why Aren't You? • Doing More w/ Hudson - Gant, Multiple Grails?, Maven Overlays • Adoption in Scandinavia - Sweden (.NET projects), Finland

Fresh from the JavaOne today printed newletter for Day 1 (Tuesday), Hudson was awarded the 2008 DUke's Choice Award in the Developer Solutions category.

The full list of winnners is: • Step2e - Java Technology in Broadcasting • Cocchiaro Music - Digital Imaging • UpNext - Java Everywhere • Crisk Software ltd - Java in Education • University of the Philippines - Dilman - Medical Solutions • Sentilla - Pervasive Solutions • LiveScribe - Mobile Device • CERN - Science Research • Learning 360 - Java Technology in Education • Hudson - Developer Solutions • mPowerPlay - Mobile Gaming • OpenOffice.org - Fan's choice.

Here is the Official Announcement.

The "rubber chicken" is sometimes used as a way to encourage developers to avoid "breaking builds" (search for "rubber" in Martin Fowler's CI Article). The rubber chicken creates some social pressure but its silliness removes the sting. Last fall, Clint Shark wrote a note on a CI Game that works from the other direction and socially rewards good putbacks, and last week Redsolo posted a Hudson plugin to do this. Check out the Continuous Integration Game or go directly to the Plugin. PS. The GFv3 transition has gone through its fair share of "Broken Builds" recently. I hope that Kohsuke et al will write about the approaches they have been taking there.