A plug-in intended to make it easier for mobile developers to test applications and deploy them to the cloud is available for download.

The open source plug-in, called the Soasta CloudTest Plugin for Jenkins, links the Jenkins continuous integration system to the Soasta Touchtest platform for testing multi-touch, gesture-based applications on the CloudBees Java platform as a service. Applications would be deployed on CloudBees.

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Apple iOS and Google Android application builders can take advantage of the plug-in, which purports to eliminate manual steps in the mobile app development cycle. Jenkins has more than 40,000 installations.

"A lot of people are doing continuous integration and a lot of people are also doing mobile development," said Kohsuke Kawaguchi, who has headed up the Jenkins project and ran the forerunner Project Hudson effort. Jenkins forked out of Hudson, which began as a Sun Microsystems project and caused an internal rift at Oracle once that company acquired Sun. Hudson is now an Eclipse Foundation project.

Kawaguchi, currently an architect at CloudBees, frankly does not know if the plug-in will also work with Hudson. "It may or it may not," he said.

Developers can automate mobile functional testing via the plug-in. CloudBees and Soasta are promoting the concept of "continuous cloud delivery," featuring development, testing, and deployment to speed up the development cycle.

Developers can deploy updates as soon as code has been tested and approved.

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