The goal of this project is to provide an enterprise class application for realizing complex software projects integration. Join is the solution you need for managing and tracking your project artifacts and technical resources ; building and deploying your software during validation and integration phases.
This application aims to be the join-point between Development and Validation teams, Production and of course the Project Management. The following scheme highlights some Join main features :
But what are the differences / benefits of Join over some over Enterprise Build System like CruiseControl or DamageControl ? Join is specifically designed for big and complex projects where many development teams may be involved. It acts as an aggregator for artifacts coming from different sources and configuration management (SCM) tools whereas other systems are mono SCM.
Join is also well suited when it is too resource expensive to continuously build the project. It implements another build strategy that can be called Build On Demand. This strategy is not in contradiction with Continuous Integration principles, it is rather complementary : artifacts can be build and promoted using other systems (like CruiseControl, Continuum or Luntbuild) and then integrated into Join. This allow to focus on pure functionnal and integration tests.