Hudson is a relatively new CI server on the block; however, it has attracted a fair bit of attention due to its easy set up. In fact, you can literally get it up and running in two steps– first download it, then type java -jar hudson.war. This command fires up a web server from which you can configure Hudson to monitor projects in either CVS or Subversion.

I did find myself a bit stuck configuring a Subversion project as there wasn’t an intuitive manner in which to specify credentials. After poking around the web, I managed to find a posting related to this very issue, which provided the information I needed to fix things.

Simply put, go http://host name/scm/SubversionSCM/enterCredential and enter the appropriate information and you’ll be good to go.

For the record, after solving this minor annoyance, I had a Hudson CI instance polling a Java project in Subversion (and executing a full Ant build upon a change) within 20 minutes. It seems the attention this project is receiving is credible!