Question

Just looking for some general how things work.
If there is a Hudson ci server, does Hudson get the source from the repo and do a build, then is it normal to have the build, assuming a successful, deploy what is build somewhere, say a WAR file?

I’m wondering if Hudson is setup to use a particular build product, say maven, then just use maven commands to do the build?

How does Hudson know when to get the code and do a build, I’m assuming its programmable, in general, what are the options, ie, time based, does it know when a code check in has happened, or ??

Trying to get the big picture for now, and how some of the mechanics work.

Answer 1

Some brief answers:

• If there is a Hudson ci server, does Hudson get the source from the repo and do a build

Yes, this is one option for kicking off a build in Hudson; you can set the build job to poll your source code repository at a specified interval. Pretty much all of the main SCM systems are supported.

• then is it normal to have the build, assuming a successful, deploy
  what is build somewhere, say a WAR file?

This is easy to set up.

• I’m wondering if Hudson is setup to use a particular build product,
  say maven, then just use maven commands to do the build?

Hudson has native support for Maven and Ant builds; you just tell it to execute a particular set of targets from your Ant build file or Maven POM. Jenkins, the open source fork of Hudson, also supports Gradle; I’m not sure whether Hudson does.

• How does Hudson know when to get the code and do a build, I’m
  assuming its programmable, in general, what are the options, ie, time
  based, does it know when a code check in has happened, or ??

You can poll a certain location (or set of locations) in your SCM on a schedule and kick off a build when changes are detected, or just set the build to run on a fixed schedule. You can also trigger a build based on the results of another build.