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One of the main things I do at my current job is to maintain our department’s software build process, using things like source control (Subversion), automated builds (CruiseControl), integrated code reviews (Codestriker), continuous integration, etc. Usage (or at least knowledge of) of these things should not come as any surprise to anyone who has been involved in the software development process.

I always figured that if my place of employment ever decided to ‘relieve me of my duties’, I would have a nice entry on my resume that would perhaps let me find work in helping organizations design and implement their software development processes using the above mentioned tools and processes. However, today my manager decided to show me something ThoughtWorks has put together that jeopardizes my fallback career, a software bundle called ‘Buildix’.

With Buildix, ThoughtWorks has bundled all the open source software you need to get a software development process started immediately, without even installing software! The bundles come in 2 flavors, a runnable CD/DVD iso or a pre-packaged VMWare virtual machine. Each of these contains a KNOPPIX Linux distribution with all the software installed and configured. The bundle includes the Apache web server; Tomcat servlet container; CruiseControl automated builds; Subversion source control; Trac integrated software project management, wiki, issue tracker, and source browser; and some custom tools to make configuration fast and easy.

To create a new project, all you have to do is run a shell script that:

• Creates a Subversion repository
• Creates a CruiseControl automated build project
• Creates a Trac project, including the wiki, source browser, and links to CruiseControl results
• Creates a default user for the project
• Configures Apache and Tomcat with the new project information

Once that is done, you can use the web interface tools to create and maintain users for the project. Talk about easy!

IMHO, this is about as cool as you can get! Hats off to ThoughtWorks for this great integration, even though it’ll probably cost me a future job!