Hudson is a continuous integration tool written in Java, which runs in a servlet container,
such as Apache Tomcat or the GlassFish application server.
It supports SCM tools including CVS, Subversion, Git, Perforce, Clearcase and RTC, and can
execute Apache Ant and Apache Maven based projects, as well as arbitrary shell scripts
and Windows batch commands.
The primary developer of Hudson was Kohsuke Kawaguchi, who worked for Sun Microsystems
at the time.
Released under the MIT License, Hudson is free software.
Builds can be started by various means, including scheduling via a cron-like mechanism, building
when other builds have completed, and by requesting a specific build URL.
Hudson became a popular alternative to CruiseControl and other open-source build servers in 2008.
At JavaOne conference in May 2008, it was the winner of Duke's Choice Award in the Developer
Solutions category.
When Oracle bought Sun, it declared its intention to trademark the Hudson name, and development
began on a commercial version.
It was decided by the majority of the development community, including Kawaguchi, to continue
the project under the name Jenkins in early 2011.
Oracle maintained that Hudson was continuing development and that Jenkins was a fork; the
Jenkins developers considered Hudson to be the fork.
Interest in Hudson collapsed thereafter.
Eventually Oracle donated the remaining Hudson project assets to the Eclipse Foundationat
the end of 2012.
As of November 2013, there are many more commits per day to the Jenkins project than to Hudson.
Plugins Hudson is extensible through a plugin architecture,
and many plugins have been made publicly available which extend it far beyond purely being a
build tool for Java projects.
Plugins are available for integrating Hudson with most version control systems and bug
databases.
Many build tools are supported via their respective plugins.
Plugins can also change the way Hudson looks or add new functionality.
Builds can generate test reports in various formats and Hudson can display the reports
and generate trends and render them in the GUI.
Hudson–Jenkins split In November 2010, an issue arose in the Hudson
community with respect to the infrastructure used, which grew to encompass questions over
Oracle's stewardship and perceived control of the project.
Negotiations between the principal project contributors and Oracle took place, and although
there were many areas of agreement a key sticking point was the control of the name "Hudson"
itself, which Oracle claimed, and for which it submitted a trademark registration in early
December 2010.
As a result, on January 11, 2011, a proposal was made to change the project name from "Hudson"
to "Jenkins".
The proposal was overwhelmingly approved by those that voted on January 29, 2011, creating
the Jenkins project.
On February 1, 2011, Oracle indicated that it, in partnership with others in the community,
intended to continue development of Hudson.
Move to Eclipse Foundation On May 3, 2011, the Eclipse Foundation in
conjunction with the key Hudson committers, Oracle, Sonatype and other community supporters
put forward a formal proposal for the transfer of Hudson, including the core code and problematic
trademarks to the Eclipse Foundation.
Hudson's founder Kohsuke Kawaguchi saw the Oracle move as validating Jenkins.
"When we were talking with Oracle to find a middle ground, they made it very clear that
they have no intention of giving up the trademark control.
But with this move, they clearly acknowledge that Oracle couldn't keep up with the Jenkins
project."
On January 24, 2012, Eclipse announced the inclusion of Hudson 3 in the Eclipse Foundation.
See also
Continuous integration software References
External links Hudson homepage
Hudson presentation Hudson free book
Hudson Documentation in PDF Hudson and CI related articles
"7 Ways to Optimize Jenkins/Hudson" from Hudson founder Kohsuke Kawaguchi