Hello Yvette,
We wanted this book to be much more than just Hudson documentation. We wanted it also to be a guide for how to get the most of Hudson in software development. Rather than type some text, I'll just copy and paste a bit from the chapter itself.
The previous chapter introduced Hudson and explained the process of setting up a working Hudson instance and creating a simple job. One thing that is immediately apparent after completing that first job is the unique nature of Hudson: it’s a product that is only useful in combination with other products. For this reason, skill in using Hudson is only valuable when combined with skill in using the other products with which Hudson integrates. This chapter introduces the tools most commonly used with Hudson, and introduces the software development concepts in which Hudson can play a central role. It is beyond the scope of this book to provide full coverage of all these tools, but references are provided where full coverage can be found.
Hudson in the Software Development Lifecycle
It is difficult to understate the importance of software in history and in today’s economy. Even though software is an extremely recent development in history, it is only the fifth knowledge storage medium in history. Philip G. Armour, in his 2003 book The Laws of Software Process, identifies five knowledge storage media in history: DNA, brains, tools, printed media, and software. The pervasiveness of software and its impact on everyone’s life means that software should be as high quality as possible. To achieve high-quality software, the processes for creating, testing, documenting, delivering, and maintaining software should be as good as possible. This is the purpose of the software development lifecycle.
Though the sole purpose of the software development lifecycle is to make software, many ways have been devised over the years to partition the required tasks, with various names such as “waterfall,” “spiral,” and “agile.” Such topics are well beyond the scope of this book, but all of these approaches are made more successful when automation can be brought to bear in their execution. This is where Hudson comes in. Regardless of the process used for software development, or the number of people involved, Hudson can be used to achieve higher-quality software.
Does this give you a flavor of the chapter? It's only Chapter 2, and its title is
Precondition Primer, so you get the idea that it's a chapter that explains stuff that some readers will already know, but hopefully with a fresh perspective.
Ed