CITCON Brussels 2007

I recently returned from CITCON, the continuous-integration conference. It's held three times a year, once each in the US, Europe, and Asia. Even though, CITCON lasts only one evening plus one full day, it was surely one of the most informative developer events I have ever attended. And I have been to a lot of developer conferences/shows/seminars.

What made CITCON so productive was several unusual aspects:

1) registration is limited to 100 attendees, so it has a human-sized feel to it. Unlike some shows where there are several hundred attendees in a single session, at CITCON, by the third session, I knew several of the attendees in the room from previous sessions. By the end, I'd been in sessions with about half the attendees, it seemed.

2) CITCON uses the open conference format, in which there is no pre-existing list of presentations. Rather, everyone gets together the first night and proposes topics they'd like to know more about or ones they'd like to present. Then attendees get to mark the ones they'd like to go to. The sessions with the most votes are slotted for the next day. You are free to drift in and out of the sessions as you wish. In future posts, I'll discuss this format in greater depth. However, it creates an interesting blend: some sessions are presentation, others are discussion. Of these, the discussions were consistently the most interesting. For example, one session I attended (I was one of six attendees) discussed the problem of delaying commits until after code reviews. How do you handle the opposing pressures of quality enforcement vs. timely commits? Various attendees explained what they had done at their sites and what had not worked. Finally, Patrick Smith from Agitar, expressed a method he had used in consulting, and the session moved to analysis of the benefits of that approach. This kind of fruitful sharing is near impossible at regular tradeshows except at BoF sessions, which often still lack the give-and-take of a shared problem.

3) The conference sessions all fit into one day. This remarkably changes your motivation. You show up early, you go to every session, you stay late, and you hang out afterwards for social hour to go over notes with other attendees, especially those who have interest/challenges in common with you.

Focused, informative, and no talking heads. Very cool. I'll be back. Next instance is in Denver in April.

Continuous Integration Servers

The authors of the recent book on Continuous Integration have undertaken a series of snapshots of CI servers, which will be a big help to everyone who is assessing CI.

There are many CI servers to choose from, as this table amply demonstrates. For myself, I am undertaking evaluations of three options; and after some preliminary research, I have decided on these finalists:

• CruiseControl (the grand-daddy of them all and the defining CI server)
  
• Continuum (because I work with Maven 2, this should be a good fit)
  
• Hudson (admired for its ease of use)
  

I'll report on my findings, although the results will be colored somewhat by how well these tools work with my current project, whose CI needs are clear, but modest. Partly in preparation, I will shortly be hanging with the cool cats at CITCON, a CI conference being held October 19-20 in Brussels. Attendance is free but limited to 100 attendees. CITCON is the brainchild of Jeff Frederick and Paul Julius of CruiseControl fame, but it typically draws cognoscenti and users of other CI servers. The format is open, meaning that it's more of a series of BoF sessions than pure lecture. I'll report on the good stuff in future posts for those who can't make it to Belgium in time.