Automatic tests using multiple slaves in Hudson

Question

I am considering using Hudson as a dashboard for the automatic tests that are run for each build in our team.

Some of the tests require that more than one computer to work in sync with each other (e.g. one sending a signal, the other one processing it). My idea was to have multiple 'slaves' online which the 'test job' could then use but I can't find anything related to syncing Hudson slaves online.

Has anyone come across this?

Answer 1

How about creating 2 jobs that use SCM polling for the same changes, but they must be run on specific nodes.

Then each node can wait for the other to start and make their connections.

Answer 2

Hudson might be the wrong tool for the job. You could create configurations for each "part" of the test (say the client side and the server side) and configure those to run only on certain slaves.

And you can run jobs after each other ("Build after other projects are built") but you need to run the jobs at the same time.

You could use "Trigger builds remotely (e.g., from scripts)" but what you really need is to start several jobs at once.

So what you need is a way to start several jobs. Try the Script Console (Jenkins but Hudson should have something similar). Maybe you can start jobs by running a script either using the console or the command line interface.

If that doesn't work out, consider to install the client/server stuff in virtual machines (VirtualBox, VMWare, VirtualPC) and use virsh to start/stop them from your tests.