thanks sean: To augment, I found this presentation http://www.docstoc.com/docs/155631546/1615-Bigtop-presentation, where the goals of bigtop are also stated:
- Generates packages of ecosystem tools - Generates "convenience artifacts" for certain tools - Runs Integration tests of tools So I guess big top is a non standard project in that , although it builds artifacts, those artifacts can already be built from other places. However, in addition to building artifacts, it actually tests those artifacts between one another - and the fact that it does this is actually one of the "major" artifacts - because that process does the integration testsing for the matrix of hadoop ecosystem tools. Anyways... just thinkinng out loud while getting a feel for this awesome peice of work. Very useful and wish i knew of it earlier. after a few years of hadooping around and banging my head against integration ecosystems various components. Hope this helps others that are new to the big top project.!!
