Continuum is a continous integration server that will ensure the health of your code base.

The term "continuous integration" refers to a process that builds and tests code on a frequent, regular basis. Many continuous integration systems monitor a source repository at regular intervals and trigger an "integration" every time someone commits a change. An "integration" can be anything from compiling and testing a single project to the assembly and testing of a deliverable from multiple dependent projects. Among the benefits of continuous integration are the immediate identification of defects and the ability to guarantee that a project's build will succeed at any point in the development cycle.

An in-depth description of continuous integration is beyond the scope of this FAQ. A much more detailed explanation of the concept can be found at the resources listed below:

• Martin Fowler has a article called "Continuous Integration"
• The C2 wiki has a page on ContinuousIntegration

There are many continuous integration projects and products on the market. Here is a list of other products which offer similar capabilities:

• CruiseControl
• AntHill

Help for Continuum can be obtained by subscribing and posting to the Continuum Users List.

You can also join us on IRC at irc.codehaus.org on the channel #continuum. This is available both over IRC and HTTP for those behind firewalls (enter #continuum in the Channel box).

Please remember that is is a preview release, so please be patient with features that are not yet implemented, and be prepared to do some research and to help out yourself wherever possible.

The Continuum project welcomes anyone that wishes to contribute to do so by providing patches to the source code, participating in design discussions, or to help out on the users mailing list by answering questions.

Frequent contributors recognised by existing committers to the project may be asked if they would like to join the project.

For more information, please see How to Help.

Good documentation is essential, and any help would be appreciated. If you would like to help create documentation for the Continuum project, check out the Continuum site project from the ASF Subversion repository and submit patches using Codehaus' JIRA installation.

To checkout the continuum-site project from the ASF Subversion repository, download the Subversion client for your platform and run: svn co http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/maven/continuum/trunk/continuum-site

To build the continuum-site project you will need to use Maven 2. You can download Maven 2 from the Downloads page on the Maven 2 project site. Once you have installed Maven 2 and added it to your PATH, you can build the Continuum project site by executing the site:site goal with the following command: m2 site:site. After executing the site:site goal, the Continuum site will be stored in the target/site directory.

Once you have updated the documentation, generate a patch by running svn diff > site-patch.txt. Create a new issue in the Continuum JIRA project, and attach your patch to this issue. Before submitting the patch, make sure to build the Continuum site locally and proofread for any typos.

Note: If you haven't already read How to Help, you should. And, if you happen to use Emacs, don't forget to (setq-default tab-width 4 indent-tabs-mode nil).