Cruise: the newest CI server from ThoughtWorks
• Julian Simpson
ThoughtWorks Studios has announced it's latest product: a Continuous Integration server called Cruise. It's derived from the open source project CruiseControl with many new features promised. Jez Humble announced it to the CruiseControl developers on April 15. Presumably this will replace CruiseControl Enterprise, which was announced about a year ago.
Call me shallow, but I do like the name. CruiseControl always gets abbreviated to 'Cruise': why not give it the name that sticks?
The list of features looks impressive. I'm particularly interested in having a look at the Build Pipeline support. The idea of the pipeline is nice, but I'm still waiting to see a good implementation; and I'd like to see how it works in practice - I've been less than impressed in the past.
The support for Java, .NET and Ruby out of the box is a good thing. The 3 different CruiseControls that we all ended up with each have some great features. With each project being run separately, innovations tend to stick to the CruiseControl fork that they originated in.
You can read up on the rest of the feature list for yourself - click the link at the top of this article.
What will be interesting is how it's going to fit into the CI marketplace. The first movers in the commercial CI tools space like have been carving out market share. Microsoft offers CI tools. There's a load more of open source contenders now than there was a couple of years ago. Having said all that, ThoughtWorks are the people who put CI on the map. I think they will generate a lot of interest.
It's a growing market. Let's see what happens.