CI Build status output alternatives

Question

We currently use Cradiator to display the status of our continuous integration (CI) builds from CruseControl.net, on a 42" Samsung television on display high-up in our IT department.

Cradiator is a great starting place, but we're getting to the point whereby we're having lots of projects on there and it's starting to get a bit 'full'.

What I'd like to know is, what do you use to display your build statuses? Custom software? Off the shelf stuff? etc. Alternatively, I'm looking for ideas on how we improve on Cradiator.

Answer 1

If projects depend on each other somehow or if you can assign some priority (business value?), then I would consider some tree or a map kind of stuff. For 100+ projects it really should be more visible which greens/reds are more important than others. Myself I'm using just the structured web dashboard + systray. Not even email.

Answer 2

I use Hudson, and when I have a chance to dedicate a monitor to it, I'm going to start with this:

http://wiki.hudson-ci.org//download/attachments/37323554/Hudson_1.jpg

http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/Radiator+View+Plugin

... after all, if they're green, they don't need to take up much screen space, do they? Imagine if they were all green. People would be just as happy (and just as informed) if it showed a big checkmark and nothing else. So you only really need to highlight the failing ones. Cradiator looks skinnable, and you're already using it, so that's the first thing I would try.

Answer 3

I mentioned several solutions for Hudson in a previous answer:

There are many solutions (all links below point to working solutions with Hudson or existing plugins):

• Hudson Build Status Lava Lamps
• Hudson Ambient Orb
• Hudson Do It Yourself Orb
• "Red Bear Alert!" - The Hudson Bear Lamps
• "Watch the bikes!" - Extreme Feedback with Traffic Lights
• Start to smell those code smells
• Nabaztag
• TuxDroid
• Radiator View (ideal for displaying on a screen on the office wall)
• eXtreme Feedback Panel (even better than the Radiator View, especially for a FullHD flat panel)

Check out the other Build notifiers plugins for more ideas.

Personally, I have experienced the bunny, lava lamps, orbs and the radiator view. They all do the job but I have a little preference for the lava lamps. As Jeffrey mentioned in another answer, it's indeed funny to race against the wax to fix a build failure :)

We're currently using the Radiator View that includes now the modifications mentioned in this comment. It's use the space in a very neat way and does a perfect job, even when you have a lots of projects. It's just great.

Check the link for more screenshots. I miss lava lamps a bit (because they are fun) but the Radiator View provides better feedback IMO.

Answer 4

One idea (and Cradiator does have an issue tracker item for it) is to only showing broken builds.

Another idea, is to monitor multiple configuration sets and switch/fade between them at a set interval.

Our team has 12 projects to monitor, but to get around the clutter we currently have 1 machine with 2 monitors connected. Each monitor has an instance of Cradiator running on it. Doing this and using the RegEx Project Filter feature in Cradiator we show 5 projects on one monitor and a different 7 on the other. This should keep us going until about 15 projects, when the clutter will start to gang up on us again.

Cradiator is open source and the 'skin' concept is relatively isolated, just waiting for you to get your hands dirty in the source code!

In fact, I have just moved the source code for Cradiator to GitHub for a more flexible approach to sharing each other's work. Fork away.