Centralised Continuous Integration/Build setup Vs. Project specific build setup

Question

What are the pros/cons of having a centralized continuous integration/build setup (in our case it will be cruise control) as opposed to project-specific setup?

So far, we had a project specific setup of cruisecontrol, but now many other groups want to move to CI as well, and are asking for a central cruiseserver. I'd like to know if anyone has any experience (good/bad) to share that can help me on this.

Here are some initial thoughts:

Pros: A central system would be easy to administer avoiding duplication of efforts all across the organization in setting up and maintaining cruise instances for various projects.

Cons: The central system may have to be a more controlled setup w.r.t access etc., and hence may need to be owned by a dedicated person/group, while the project cruise instances can be under the control of the project group, making changes/enhancements faster and project-specific.

I'd appreciate any inputs on this.

Answer 1

One issue we have with our centralized systems is queue length. The more projects you have on the system the more time you have to wait. Or the more you have to split your CI into distributed tasks.