Daily Build

Question

OK, so we all know the daily build is the heart beat of a project, but whats the single best way of automating it?

We have perl scripts wrapping our pipeline which includes ClearCase, VS2005 (C++), Intel FORTRAN, Inno setup. We use cron jobs on UNIX to schedule the build, and host a simple Apache web server to view and monitor the build. All in all its rather complex, I would like to know whats the best off the shelf solution that people use?

And yes I did say FORTRAN no escaping it sometimes, it works, no point doing a huge re-implementation project for some tried and tested FEA code that just works.

Answer 1

We use TeamCity - but then its a simple C#/Java development - maybe your pipeline can done via scripts it can drive?

Answer 2

We're in the process of implementing CC.Net. So far it seems like it would fit your model pretty well.

Out of the box it offers automated building, results tracking and notification. I'm not sure how detailed the build-in-progress monitoring is though.

Answer 3

A new one to me that I've heard is quite slick is hudson - also with MSBuild support.

Answer 4

I have had success using Visual Build Pro.

Answer 5

There are many tools that specifically handle this:

• Cruise Control
• Hudson
• Continuum

The tools have out of the box support for the most common build types. They all also support some sort of "run this script" type build process.

In the end you should use the nicer build tools (MSBuild, Ant, Maven, Make, ...) where you can and fill the gaps for the odder tools with custom scripts. The automated build can just invoke these in the right order.

Answer 6

CC.NET is very powerful. Used it and was really happy about it. Even the status icon in the systray. It's a small detail, but it gives you a good overview of the project's "health". You immediately feel motivated to fix the tests when you see it red.

Now we use a self-baked series of scripts. Since we write Python, compilation is non-existant, so the only problem is running the tests.

Answer 7

If you're working with Visual Studio, be sure to check out Team Foundation Build to see if it will suit your situation.

It looks like Buck Hodges' blog post on the VS 2008 version is a good resource, too.

Answer 8

Here is the best resource we found to help us pick a Continuous Integration tool. We have been evaluating 5 or 6 tools on this page.

http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CC/CI+Feature+Matrix