How to Build a Continuous Integration Environment for Java with Jenkins, Maven, SVN, and IntelliJ IDEA

Continuous Integration is a practice that does not necessarily require specialized CI server software. You know for sure some magicians, who are able to write amazing shell scripts in less than a few hours, that calls the build, makes the tests, deploys status emails with links to nicely formatted reports and run it periodically at fixed times as Cron job. But not everybody is such a shell script wizard. For the rest of us, there is CI server software like Jenkins.

Regardless what way you take, you need a build process, that can be initiated by command line. The same applies to your tests. There are several build tools; the usual suspects in the Java world being Ant, Maven and meanwhile Gradle. Sometimes there are heated debates, which is the better tool. This is certainly not the case here, although I personally have a slight tendency towards Maven for several reasons.

The next important component is a version control system, in this example Subversion is used.

The screencast is divided into the following sections:

– Some basic configuration of Jenkins

– Quick setup of SVN

– Configure quickly a very simple Maven project on the command line

– Import the Maven project into IntelliJ IDEA and link it to the SVN repository

– Create a Jenkins Job, that polls every 5 minutes the SVN repository for changes

– Let a JUnit test fail and show what happens

– Add a dependency on log4j to Maven’s pom.xml and show the interaction between Maven, IntellliJ and Subversion

The actual project is nothing fancy, just a dummy Java Swing application.

But the same principles apply to more complicated scenarios, e.g. when working with a JEE stack. IMHO these are scenarios in which Maven can play its strengths. That’s perhaps a topic for a further blog post, who knows? 😉