Diagnosing Cruise Control .NET task timeouts

Question

I've got a CCNet build script that runs fine, with the exception of every now and then an MSBuild task times out. I've gone in and increased the timeouts from 600 to 900 to 1200. No dice, so I'm lead to believe it has something to do with what MSBuild is building; a big old web application project. I've looked on the google for any indication of issue here, but have turned up nothing.

Has anyone experienced this problem before? More generally, what steps do you take to diagnose a timeout in CCNet?

Answer 1

I've experienced something similar a number of times where a local build was quite fast but the task was timing out on cruise control.

It always cooked down to pulling down stuff (maybe a whole branch of your code) from some network location and the cruise control task timing out for that reason.

Other option, you build machine could be very low on spec, but you would have noticed that!

Answer 2

Try creating a batch file that only runs the msbuild project on the command line and use MsBuild Profiler to see where all the time is being spent.

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\msbuild.exe Build.proj /l:MSBuildProfileLogger,MSBuildProfiler,Version=1.0.1.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=09544254e89d148c

Good 'ol process of elimination