Module Integration with CI (Hudson)

Module Integration with CI (Hudson)

Long back we (RM @ Openbravo) introduced CI (Continuous Integration) tool (Hudson) for testing code of our core ERP development branch.
Which allowed our developers to do:
- Daily Builds (Full/Incremental).
- Smoke Tests.
- DB Consistency Tests.
- etc.

But as most of the developers were becoming modular (Openbravo became modular with Openbravo ERP Version 2.50), CI was not able to maintain the pace and provide similar help for the module testing.

To set things in place we enabled our developers to integrate and test their modules using new CI even after committing even a single changeset to their module repository.

According to me the goal or I will say the purpose of this whole effort was to enable a developer to have a nice and sound sleep after he pushes his commit to the module repository.
Sounds confusing?

Let me explain it.
Earlier developers use to develop a module and used to do time consuming small manual testing to make sure that their code is bug free.
From a developers perspective he cannot sleep properly until his module is tested and deployed properly.

To enable CI for modules and save developers time (from manual testing) we created the setup which will help developers to directly configure a new job in Hudson to test their changesets. This new setup empowers them to do:
- Sanity Check
- Source compilation check and Create OBX
- Database consistency test
- Module's JUnit test
- Installation of the generated OBX
- Un-Installation of the installed module
- Selenium test (module smoke)
- Upgrade the module from previous published version in CR (Central Repository) to generated OBX
Even for a single new changeset in the module's repository.

And still it has endless possibilities, where we can integrate new test cases to this.

We have also created a template job (which is pre-configured with all these test cases) to help developers configure and run tests for their modules easily.
Developers will just have to copy the template job to a new job, change the variables to their modules related variables and then run the job. We have also created a simplified wiki for step by step instructions.

* Currenty Openbravo developers working on any Modules can take benefits of this tool (but sky is the limit, maybe someday we can allow partners/community to take advantage of this tool).