I second this! It is inconvenient and sometimes not possible to open a browser to look at the console window or if you are on a mobile and trying to save on a data plan

Perhaps add an option like this:

[checkbox] Append last ## lines of the console log (blank means all)

?

Derek

Updated summary and components as ircbot is affected as well.

Or perhaps,

[checkbox] Append [dropdown: first|last] textbox: ## lines of the console log (blank means all)

This can allow for very interesting things in the IM plugin

For example, you can write any standalone task and pass in parameters, and have it output back to you results of the job, like

!build 'downloadjob' '12345.torrent' which fires off a process to download a file

then the response would be if it was successful picking up the job (i.e. maybe using ctorrent), kicking off another job to send you a message when the download is complete...

Or perhaps there's another job that outputs how much space is left in your volume:

!build 'showspacejob'

The possibilities are endless. I can see a lot of usage for this kind of interaction and will allow a very convenient way to "talk" to a bot that can perform different jobs for you without ever logging into the hudson site

Note: since instant-messaging 1.10 (Jabber 1.12, IRCBot 2.7) you can extend the plugin with your own 'BuildToChatNotifier'

How? Where?

Sorry, this isn't documented, yet.
You have to implement a plugin which depends on instant-messaging plugin and in your plugin you've to provide an implementation of the BuildToChatNotifier interface.
When you install your plugin the new notification type should appear in the drop-down box.

BTW: I also plan to implement a fully flexible token-replacement mechanism like in the email-ext plugin, but it will probably take some time until this becomes real.