The idea is that we build on the good things and remove the bad things.

Good Things

Among the improvements, there are new chart showing Checkstyle, PMD and JavaDoc violations over time

– "CruiseControl 2.6 has been released!", Xavier Warzee, 14 January, 2007

CruiseControl is a mature and robust Java continuous integration tool that enjoys a strong user base and a solid industry reputation. It supports virtually any type of project, be it Ant, Maven, Maven 2, make, or just a plain-old command line script, as well as a wide range of SCM (source configuration management) tools. Its notification techniques are second to none. And it also benefits from a large number of third-party plug-ins.

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Overall, CruiseControl is a powerful and flexible continuous integration tool, albeit with a non-trivial learning curve. It is a pure CI tool, with little in the way of inter-project dependency or build artifact management. However, its flexibility and sophisticated notification techniques can make it an excellent choice for experienced continuous integration practitioners.

– "Which open source CI tool is best suited for your application environment?", John Ferguson Smart, 11 January, 2006

CruiseControl provides many useful features, has a strong user community, and is extremely extensible. As compared to the other tools evaluated in this article, some developers feel that CruiseControl is not as easy to use. On the other hand, some find that making changes with an XML script offers greater control.

– "Automation for the People: Choosing a Continuous Integration Server", Paul Duvall, 5 September, 2006

Bad Things

We are currently running TeamCity 1.2 for our changeset, and nightly builds. We had previously used cruisecontrol but it had significant stability issues. We really like the integration with Intellij that TeamCity provides.

– "Performance issues running inspection builds.", Adam Butler, 1 February, 2007

CruiseControl was more of just an installation / documentation mess. And I'm sure that all of the good folks working on CC have been trying really hard, but I think the story on how you get the build and web server started up (even in light of the docs targeted at exactly that) is still too confusing. I managed to get the CC instance itself going pretty quickly, but I can't figure out exactly which env vars should be set, working directories, etc.

– "Open Source Frustration", Alex Miller at Pure Danger Tech, 22 January, 2007

...configuring a CruiseControl project can be a somewhat painful experience, with a fairly steep learning curve.

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Basically, when you build a particular project, you may also need to build other libraries to avoid integration issues. This is not one of CruiseControl's strengths. In the current version, CruiseControl offers only limited support for inter-project dependencies (via the <buildstatus> plug-in). CruiseControl also offers little in the way of build management in the broader sense: it is difficult to define inter-project dependencies, for example.

– "Which open source CI tool is best suited for your application environment?", John Ferguson Smart, JavaWorld.com, 11 January, 2006