Setting up CI with Jenkins is easy

Well, it has its own quirks and you can waste quite some time until your find your way around the UI, but that’s not the difficult part.

The difficult part is taking a project that has many parts and changing it so the CI system can handle it.

In many cases people are used to compile their code on their own machine using their IDE. We need to be able to compile the code using the command line only.

We cannot rely on someone installing the correct version of all the dependencies. We need to be able to that using a command on the command line.

If there is a database behind the application then we need to be able to have a similar database for the automated testing.

If we need specialized hardware we need to be able to access such a devices from the CI machine and make sure our processes don’t interfere.

All the above will require cooperation among front-end and back-end developers, sysadmins, DBAs, etc. Not an easy task.

Most importantly it will require a change in the culture of the organization to maintain the system.