Eclipse Foundation announces release of Hudson 3.0

OTTAWA, CANADA: The Eclipse Foundation has announced the release of Hudson 3.0.

Hudson is a continuous integration (CI) server used to improve the software development process said Eclipse Foundation and further added, it increases productivity by coordinating and monitoring executions of repeated jobs, making it easier for developers to integrate changes to the project and for users to obtain a fresh build.

CI with automated test execution has seen broad adoption in recent years, changing the way companies look at Build Management, Release Management, Deployment Automation and Test Orchestration.

A CI solution provides executives, business managers, software developers and architects a better sense of the development process and code quality of projects through the development lifecycle.

"The wide popularity of Hudson and the feedback from its vibrant community were the key drivers of this release," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation.

"All contributors to the project have also worked to ensure Hudson evolves into a scalable, reliable and high-performance continuous integration server for current and future users."

Chris Tonas, vice president, Application Development Tools, Oracle said, "With a strong and engaged ecosystem, Hudson continues to thrive, and Oracle's goal in moving the project to the Eclipse Foundation has expanded this even further."

Tonas further added that Hudson 3.0 adds key capabilities that make continuous integration easier than ever to implement and manage while enhancing the overall environment for developers."

Hudson 3.0 highlights:

Plug-In Manager: Simplifies management and installation from a repository of over 400 existing plug-ins. It also enables the registration of custom plug-in repositories. Additional administrative settings give IT control over the range of plugins available to Hudson administrators.

Simplified installation: New self-installation and Bootstrap configuration enables configuration during first launch and just-in-time loading of non-Eclipse components.

Architectural improvements and abstraction layer: Hudson core scripting and charting layers have been abstracted to support different technologies such as Eclipse BIRT for charts.

Smaller footprint and Eclipse compliance: The size of Hudson footprint has been reduced by 50 percent. This was the result of the work to modernize and change the underlying libraries used in Hudson to meet Eclipse IP requirements. Libraries using GPL or LGPL licenses were removed, existing libraries were updated to the latest versions, and library redundancies were resolved.

Support and certification for top plug-ins: Ensures that the most frequently used Hudson plug-ins can integrate with the latest versions.

Improved look and feel: Web interface redesign using JQuery provides a more responsive user interface.