Why Cruise

What advantages does Cruise, the continuous integration and software release management tool, offer over traditional continuous integration tools such as CruiseControl, CruiseControl net and CruiseControl rb? Here are some of the benefits.

Introducing pipelines: model your release workflow.

You want to split your build up into several stages, but it's hard to relate the builds to each other. No more. Cruise makes it simple to see which modifications passed or failed the various build stages, and what is in your testing environments at any time. Using the concept of deployment pipelines, you can define the various stages that a set of modifications must pass through such as a “commit” stage which compiles the software and runs unit tests, functional and performance test stages, and stages for each of your testing environments.

Quick Tour | Features and Benefits

Straightforward scalability and maintainence
Simply install the Cruise Agent onto every computer that you want Cruise to run work on, and Cruise will scale your build cloud automatically. No need to check out code onto each computer or configure each agent—Cruise will do everything for you. Upgrade Cruise Server, and Cruise Agents will automatically upgrade themselves.
Run work in parallel
Each stage in Cruise is defined as a set of jobs -- and the stage only passes when all the jobs pass. Cruise automatically gives jobs to idle agents to run in parallel. You can use jobs within a stage to run your build on multiple environments simultaneously and to split your build up into multiple test suites which run concurrently.

More on Multi-platform Testing
Use pipelines to manage your testing and deployment workflow
Stages are joined together into a pipeline. For example, a pipeline might include a commit stage, a functional testing stage, and a user acceptance testing stage. When one stage is successfully completed, the next stage will automatically be triggered. You can see commits propagate through the various stages you have defined, and even manually control whether a change moves through to the next stage or not.

More on Release Management
Simple dependency management
It is often the case with medium and large projects that different teams work on different components of an application, or on frameworks. With Cruise, you can specify that a change in a framework triggers dependent components to be built, so it is easy to see if an API change breaks dependent projects. Conversely if you’re working on a dependent project it is easy to see that a change in a component you depended on broke the build rather than a change you made to your code.

More on Dependency Management
Control access to your build cloud
Cruise has LDAP and ActiveDirectory support built in, so you can control who has access to your build cloud. With authentication switched on, Cruise records your name when you trigger a build or promote a build manually.
Continuous feedback on your project's health
Tell Cruise where the reports and binaries your build produces are, and it will store them in its central artifacts repository for easy access by developers, testers and managers. Cruise also exposes per-job properties such as duration and result, and you can set and retrieve your own properties such as code coverage. Cruise provides an open data API so you can save and retrieve artifacts and properties with HTTP, and export them into Excel for analysis and graphing.
Focus on innovation and value, not defects
Because Cruise gives you the tools to manage your deployment workflow, you can get to work early on automating your testing and deployment processes. With fast feedback on whether your code is really working, you can stop worrying about your release and start worrying about the stuff that really matters—delighting your users.
ThoughtWorks best practices built in
ThoughtWorks was one of the pioneers of agile and lean methodologies in IT consulting. Our consultants created CruiseControl, the world's first continuous integration server. Cruise leverages ThoughtWorks' extensive experience helping our clients worldwide use continuous integration and release management best practices to make software delivery painless.

Why Cruise

Straightforward scalability and maintainence

Run work in parallel

Use pipelines to manage your testing and deployment workflow

Simple dependency management

Control access to your build cloud

Continuous feedback on your project's health

Focus on innovation and value, not defects

ThoughtWorks best practices built in