The Luntbuild team has announced the release of Luntbuild 1.3, a powerful build automation and management tool. It is available at Sourceforge and at Javaforge.

Improvements in version 1.3 include:

• Vastly expanded remote API
• Added basic LDAP authentication support
• Added Maven version 2 builder
• Added Rake builder
• Improved output format (Html, Xml, Text) of Luntbuild reports (build, revision, system log)
• Added templates support for Luntbuild notifiers messages, based on the Velocity template engine
• Added support for external DBs (installer, scripts); MySql, Progress are supported
• Implemented anonymous user access (view)
• Standalone Luntbuild using Jetty servlet container
• Updated Jabber notifier to support SSL, GoogleTalk
• Added notifier support for Lotus Sametime

Eclipse plugin for Luntbuild, and its standalone RCP version were dramatically improved to support:

• Multiple Luntbuild connections
• Create, edit project, builders, schedules
• Search and view history builds
• Help
• and more

The beta versions of the plugin and standalone application are available.

How does Luntbuild compare to Anthill and CruiseControl. Looked on the website didn't see a comparison matrix... and does it have support for plugins like CC? (CC has a nice way of being able to plugin PMD, for example)

Luntbuild is a very nice build system that can be used to not only provide an automated build of your development code, but can also be a full build system for QA and production builds. It includes nice features like build promotion, inter-build dependencies with automated build triggering, and supports more version control systems than other builders I've seen. My team and I built and maintain the Accurev adapter for Luntbuild, so I can tell you firsthand that the internals are pretty nicely designed, and plugging in another VCS is relatively painless. I definitely recommend Luntbuild.

It (...) supports more version control systems than other builders I've seen.

I'm not so sure that Lintbuild have support for more VCSs than CruiseControl... Anyway, easy startup and functional GUI is a big advantage.

Regards,
Michal

Luntbuild is a very nice build system that can be used to not only provide an automated build of your development code, but can also be a full build system for QA and production builds.

That's really the key. There are really two kinds of tools in this space. CruiseControl focuses on doing CI builds and does that fairly well. What tools like LuntBuild or Anthill bring to the party is a focus on performing and tracking the release and QA builds.

The matrix discussed above is pretty good. The DamageControl guys have given the developers of the various tools write access to the wiki so most of the claims on that matrix are made by the developers of the tools. So you're more likely to find a tool to claim support for something that they don't really support than ommissions.

Of course, a matrix goes only so far. How a feature is implemented / presented is rather important.

Jason,

You might also want to check our Parabuild to get an idea about how a production-grade build management server looks like. Parabuild’s features are a source of inspiration for many continuous integration projects.

Regards,

Slava Imeshev

My company has been using Luntbuild for over a year now. We shopped around looking at CruiseControl et al. Luntbuild is very flexible/configurable with a great tasting GUI. We use it with VSS. You would hear someone say "have you Lunted" or "did you Lunt yet" referring to the continuous builds we run.

We currently run it in our development and QA environment and now plan to use it in our production deployment environment due to its stability.

Andrew, I am new to LuntBuild but managed to set it up easily. We are using VSS for version control and has ant scripts for daily build, daily test etc. I want to use LuntBuild and automate the entire build process. With the information I got from their website, I followed the VSS configuration but did not succeed much. My LuntBuild is failing to execute SS Get command or History for some reasons even though they can be executed from the command prompt. Is it possble for you to help me on this? My email is jayvasudev at hotmail dot com Thanks in advance -Jay

Yes don't forget apache continuum...a comparison matrix is needed...

Yes don't forget apache continuum...a comparison matrix is needed...

That would be helpful.

I've used CruiseControl and was exposed to Lundt at a client.

My over-simplified opinion is that CC is more ant-like in its configuration where Lundt has a full-blown GUI. I can't say which one is more feature-complete. I think if you are the type of development team that prefers XML configuration over GUI then start looking at CC. If you want more web GUI features start with Lundt.
                                                                            
CC takes maybe an hour or two so to learn and setup initially. Not sure about Lundt but someone who I respect says that Lundt does deserve a good look.

Congratulations to the Luntbuild team. We have been using luntbuild for the past one year. We've found it very easy to setup and use. We highly recommend giving it a try when setting up infrastructure for new projects.

For those of you who asked, there is a lot of information for comparison at the Continuous Integration Server Feature Matrix page.

It is hosted on the DamageControl wiki, but I think it gives a fair representation of the available features.

That link seems to have been mangled. Try again:

Continuous Integration Server Feature Matrix

great new !