Once again, Ruby is revealing itself as a delivery tool. This time in the form of CruiseControl.rb – ruby continuous integration tool/application.
CruiseControl.rb was the topic for this month’s Calgary Ruby Users Group (CRUSERS) meeting. Accorindg to core-contributor Alexey Verkhovsky, from Thoughworks (Calgary), it’s an ‘incarnation’ [A carefully chosen word, over ‘port’] of Cruise Control (the famous continuous integration tool in Java).
The session was a light-hearted one, probably matching the spirit that lead to CruiseControl.rb.
- Java Cruise Control:
- History.
- Shortcomings (setup, Ruby integration).
- Other “Basic’ CI tools (Cerberus, CIA or continuous Builder Plugin by DHH).
- CruiseControl.rb features:
- Lightweight.
- Easy Setup (No DB setup even).
- Email, CCTray, Jabber (plug-in), RSS notifications.
- Plugin architecture (for the lava lamp enthusiasts).
- Configurations (if needed), are in Ruby.
- Setup:
- Extract the compressed file
- Dashboard Rails application (for monitoring).
- Scripts (cruise) for adding/removing project, starting/stopping the daemon (builder) script.
- Add a project (cruise add <project_name> –url file:///path/to/svn/repo/project)
- Start the Dashboard rails application.
- Enjoy.
- How it works:
- The builder (deamon) script polls the SVN repo for change.
When change is found; CruiseControl.rb updates a copy of the project, then invokes the project Rake file tasks. The priority is a ‘cruise’ task, db:test:purge, db:migrate, test or then the ‘default’ task (check cc_build.rake) - Custom Configurations:
- Custom configurations can be done through cruise_config.rb in your project directory.
- Example:
` Project.configure do|project| project.scheduler.polling_interval = 10 end` - CruiseControl shortcomings (opinionated features?)
- SVN only (so far)
- Can’t detect build results ran from outside the Dashboard (ran from the console).
- Ruby projects only (but theoretically can be hooked to other projets).
- SVN externals not handled.
- Coming Soon:
- Dependency builds
- How to contribute:
- TRY IT OUT!
- Propose features/bugs/patches/… you know.
- Cool things to try:
- You have access (from the dashboard) to the failure/error-causing line (hyperlinked tothe file, with the line highlighted)
- Text/HTML files placed in CC-BUILD_ARTIFACTS are picked up by CruiseControl.rb and hyperlinked on the specific project dashboard page (check: http://cruisecontrolrb.thoughtworks.com/builds/CruiseControl right side links for test coverage /rcov files)
- Some ‘hidden’ links:
- Documentations.
- Manual.
- Screencast.
- Download.
Quite a nice and light tool that definitely has a market (at least I know I am going to use it).
Dang: Alex was the lucky one winning ‘Rails Cookbook’ ruffle – and yes – he knows Rails enough to pass it to a friend 🙂