How long would it take to setup a new CI repository?

Question

I wonder how long it would usually take for:

1. Professional
2. Average
3. Beginner

to setup and configure CI for a new project?

Answer 1

CI Factory

TeamCity

CC.NET sample configs

Try.

Answer 2

It depends on how much other infrastructure you already have in place and whether you have issues tying everything together. Even with that in mind, you should be able to get TeamCity and all the infrastructure up and and running within a day or so if you have a decent idea of what you're doing. The documentation is pretty good for TeamCity and should get you past any bumps.

Answer 3

I have never set up CI before, which puts me squarely in your "Beginner" category. Your question nudged me to try and setup a CI system for my projects; something which I've always avoided, because I thought it would cost me a lot of effort and time.

It took me all of 20 minutes.

I used a fantastic project called CInABox (Continuous Integration in a Box). It consists of two simple scripts which download and compile Ruby and download, install and configure CruiseControl.rb for Ubuntu 8.04.

In just 20 minutes, I downloaded Ubuntu JeOS 8.04, configured a VirtualBox VM, installed Ubuntu in that VM, setup networking, installed Ruby, installed CruiseControl.rb, added my first project to CC.rb and watched the light go green! The most time was actually spent downloading Ubuntu, downloading Ruby and installing Ubuntu. The actual CI setup took less than 5 minutes.

Don't let the name fool you: CC.rb is written in Ruby, but you can build anything with it. In the default configuration, it assumes that you are using rake to build your project, but by setting just one configuration option, you can just as well use a shell script.

Answer 4

It depends on may factors:

• What features of CI do you want to use.
• Have you project installed in your CI environment already.
• What type of project. How easily it can be installed on fresh environment. just to say a few.

I think that if project is not a trivial, then all this time spent for the CI environment is worth the price. Whether it is 20 minutes or 3 days.