Tool auto-installation

[Jesse Glick <je...@oracle.com>]

http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/Tool+Auto-Installation

This would be very useful on hudson.zones.apache.org; even the most common stuff like JDKs, Ant, and Maven do not seem to be set up. Which is rather irritating because 
there is a long list of special versions of tools which only work on certain hosts. In particular, for some of the Ant-related jobs I would like to use the latest JDK 1.4 
on whichever node is available to run the job, but I have to pick between IBM JDK 1.4 on Ubuntu or Solaris 1.4, neither of which is attractive - the IBM JDK is an unusual 
config, and the Solaris slaves are often busy.

Is there any definite plan for moving to a more managed tool system? I recommend defining tools which will work on any node named e.g. "latest JDK 6" and using automatic 
installation. Specialized vendors and versions like IBM 1.4 can still be defined for limited hosts if some jobs need them.

Re: Tool auto-installation

[Niklas Gustavsson <ni...@protocol7.com>]

On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 7:53 PM, Jesse Glick <je...@oracle.com> wrote:
> http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/Tool+Auto-Installation
>
> This would be very useful on hudson.zones.apache.org; even the most common
> stuff like JDKs, Ant, and Maven do not seem to be set up.

Agreed, and as noted here I intend to attempt to move over during our
new Hudson master setup:
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/www-builds/201007.mbox/%3cAANLkTilgIxA5sWJx4T-mFJUd1N4XwxwQmpiMLO_a_tma@mail.gmail.com%3e

> Which is rather
> irritating because there is a long list of special versions of tools which
> only work on certain hosts. In particular, for some of the Ant-related jobs
> I would like to use the latest JDK 1.4 on whichever node is available to run
> the job, but I have to pick between IBM JDK 1.4 on Ubuntu or Solaris 1.4,
> neither of which is attractive - the IBM JDK is an unusual config, and the
> Solaris slaves are often busy.

For JDK 1.4 you can tie to Ubuntu, or the Solaris label. Both have
latest 1.4 set up (using the Sun JDK). The name of latest 1.4 is was
very helpful since it said "on Solaris only" which is no longer true.
Now changed.

/niklas