CI Cage Fight - Pulse
• Julian Simpson
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BBs6_3pTdQ&hl=en&fs=1]
Jason Sankey of Yutubi presented Pulse. Pulse is a closed source (though they will let you peek! see below) CI server. Jason and his team set out to make something easy and flexible, with a config GUI and an easy install.
What I like is that it scratches a very painful itch: duplication in the config. It uses a template system so that you only ever need to specify something once. With some other servers, you'll need to specify the same facts (yes, Ant is in /usr/bin, just like the last time). Not so with Pulse.
Pulse also supports:
- Distributed, multiplatform builds
- Private builds
- Role based security
It's reasonably priced: free for open source, or up to 2 users and 2 projects, up to 4000 USD for the enterprise license which I believe gives you access to the source. Jason told us over dinner that they can easily accommodate towards firms that need escrow or source access. Apparently there's a decent plugin API. The guys just released Pulse 2 a few days ago.