S#%t! I broke the build

A usual scenario with big projects where code is written an maintained by a big crowd of geeks & nerds is tend to break the system once a while. They are usually termed as 'Build breaks'. It could be because of compliation, it could be because of linking. Common reasons could be, it compiled well on my system well but broke when comitted. Finally more than the hours that we put on development of the feature, we need to put to fix these build breaks.

Could this be avoided, NO. But could be identified and rectified soon. Here is a tool from Apache, that could help you in the activity. 'Apache Continuum' is a one such tool that helps in triggerin automated builds for your project. They provide with a simple configuration portal that is easy to deploy and start your timely builds. Try it!

Some features that has impressed me are,

• Support for various source repository.
• They work with Maven projects and could launch a cmd job.
• Notifications from mail to IRC to Chat clients seems to be comprehensive.
• Keeping track of the check-ins and some intellegence in triggering a build.