Literate Builds seem quite interesting, unfortunately, I'm not sure
it would be easy/helpful to apply to our use-case.
The default and documented way to build something is just "mvn clean
verify", but our jobs do more to reduce the feedback loop and speed
up the overall build flow (Configuraiton of Xvnc, metaciy; "mvn
clean install", then publish, then "mvn clean verify" on tests). The
fact is that our CI jobs are currently not only focusing on the code
it's building, but also on how to make it interacting with other
jobs. That makes it hard to use literate build for our jobs as the
way jobs are configured is not something very relevent in the
project repository.
However, if it comes to simple "validate PR" jobs where the only
build step is "mvn clean verify", then I think the Literate plugin
can be used. However, is there a big benefit in configuring literate
plugin in job compared to just typing "mvn clean verify" in job? I'm
not sure... And even if we go for using the Literate plugin, we end
up with 20 more new jobs to maintain.
There is no difficulty in configuring 1 job, the difficulty is in
configuring 20 ones. The appropriate solution to factorize
configuration seems to be the Folder plugin:
http://www.cloudbees.com/jenkins-enterprise-by-cloudbees-features-folders-plugin.cb
. Maybe you should ask for a demo while you're around CloudBees guys
at JavaOne.