Continuous Integration systems are nowadays a requisite for any half-decent software development outfit. There are many CI solutions available, some open source and some commercial. Over the years I have come across and used different ones: CruiseControl, Hudson and Bamboo. CruiseControl is highly versatile and works well but it is a pain to set up and maintain, especially in large teams where projects get added and modified regularly. Hudson works pretty and has an active follower base contributing many plugins. But I have to say Bamboo is my favourite thus far. It works a treat, scales well with remote build agents and the web interface is user friendly. Plus this is the one I use at work so I am very familiar with it. The only down side is the cost.

I have been setting up my own dev tool set at home so I can work on my own projects. What I need now is a CI tool. I was looking for comparisons between the various options and I came across this page on the ThoughtWorks wiki:

http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CC/CI+Feature+Matrix

It is a very comprehensive comparison matrix and it seems to be updated frequently.

I’m still not sure which one I will go for…answer in the next post.