http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/Tool+Auto-Installation
This would be very useful on hudson.zones.apache.org; even the most common stuff like JDKs, Ant, and Maven do not seem to be set up. Which is rather irritating because there is a long list of special versions of tools which only work on certain hosts. In particular, for some of the Ant-related jobs I would like to use the latest JDK 1.4 on whichever node is available to run the job, but I have to pick between IBM JDK 1.4 on Ubuntu or Solaris 1.4, neither of which is attractive - the IBM JDK is an unusual config, and the Solaris slaves are often busy.
Is there any definite plan for moving to a more managed tool system? I recommend defining tools which will work on any node named e.g. "latest JDK 6" and using automatic installation. Specialized vendors and versions like IBM 1.4 can still be defined for limited hosts if some jobs need them.
