Configuring Jenkins for continuous integration

Jenkins is a popular continuous integration server in the Java development community. It is derived from the Hudson CI server. It supports SCM tools including CVS, Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Perforce, and ClearCase, and can execute Apache Maven and Apache Ant-based projects, as well as arbitrary shell scripts and Windows batch commands.

Jenkins can be deployed to set up an automated testing environment where you can run Selenium WebDriver tests unattended based on a defined schedule, or every time changes are submitted in SCM.

In this recipe, we will set up Jenkins Server to run Maven and Ant projects. Later recipes describe how Ant and Maven is used to run Selenium WebDriver tests with Jenkins.

Getting ready

Download and install the Jenkins CI server from http://jenkins-ci.org/. For this recipe, the Jenkins Windows installer is used to set up Jenkins on a Windows 7 machine.

How to do it...

Before using Jenkins, we need to set up the following...