If you haven’t heard of Hudson, you haven’t been paying attention. It’s a great Continuous Integration server that’s gaining lots of attention from .NET, Java, and Open Source teams. Hudson is Open Source and written in Java, but works with many of the above mentioned tools and languages. Like many Open Source projects, it lacks in depth documentation. Now there’s a resource in the works to fill this gap. John Ferguson Smart, a Java guy, is writing a free book, “Continuous Integration with Hudson” that will go into Hudson in depth.
So, what do I think of the book? It’s a needed project. Based on what I’ve seen of Chapter 1 and the Table of Contents, it looks fairly complete to get you up and running and addresses some of the common issues of any CI system. Because the author works with Java, the book takes a Java-leaning view, but that’s ok. You’ll still get value from it. One thing I did notice is one screen shot shows Windows XP, making the book look dated.
Another issue is that when you go to download the PDF, you can sign up for the author’s email Java tips, but no place to sign up to be notified of book updates. As a Microsoft guy, I want to know about book updates, but don’t care about Java tips.
I’m looking forward to future updates. I’ll definately be watching this book closely.