treesurgeon vrs. ci-factory

Question

I'm trying to find my hands and legs around CI.

I've played a little with CC.Net and nAnt.

Now, before trying Team City which everyone seems to recommend (and which, as far as I understand, competes with and is better than CC.Net), I want to understand that Tree Surgeon and ci-factory do, and how they fit into the big picture.

I think I understand vaguely what Tree Surgeon does: I believe it builds a "recommended" tree structure. Recommended, that is, better than VS's organization of projects under solutions. But what does ci-factory do? Does it work together with Tree Surgeon? Does it contain its functionality?

Answer 1

CI Factory sets up the CI build processes for you using NAnt. It's meant to help you to set up the CC.NET so that your solution (which you might have layed out with TreeSurgeon) can be built every time you check in.