Integrating the world….continuously

http://the.ci-guys.com

It has been almost 8 years since I helped to get the CruiseControl project started. In that time, I have talked to countless people that are trying to reach that point of CI bliss, but they don’t even know where to start. Probably an equal number of people have come to me through the likes of the CITCON conference, its mailing list, or other industry conferences having run into problems with their CI environments that they just can’t overcome. Usually, within an hour or so, I can give them something of substance to work on…somewhere to go from where they are today.

Of course, I never charge for this time. It wouldn’t even make sense. It’s just common decency to help out your fellow build engineer, isn’t it? Well, I think so. And it leaves me with a good feeling in my heart. Wouldn’t it be great if I could help more people in exactly the same way?

To that end, I am pleased to announce that Jeffrey and I have officially started offering a cool service to people that are looking for advice on their Continuous Integration landscapes. And, it won’t cost you anything.

Checkout
http://the.ci-guys.com

CITCON, the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference, hosted by Jeffrey and myself will take place in Amsterdam on October 3 & 4. Attendance is free!

This is the third annual CITCON event in Europe. London in 2006 and Brussels last year were both a blast. Everyone walked away having learned a lot about the cutting edge of CI and Testing.

So, you’re invited! Register at: http://citconf.com/amsterdam2008/register.php

And help us get the word out. Blog about it. Email your friends.

Are you tired of fighting with management to get them to let you setup a CI server for your team?

Are you tired of tiring to prove that TDD will actually make your team developer faster?

Are you fed up with watching QA run their tests by hand, over and over again?

You need Stelligent!

At Stelligent, we are hiring the brightest minds in the industry to help us help our clients. What do our clients want? They want to do all those things that you have been trying to do at your job, to no avail.

So, join Stelligent and become part of the Agile engineering movement that really makes a difference!

Email your resume to jobs@stelligent.com

Now that I am working at Stelligent, I get to post blog entries on the company blog at TestEarly.com. TestEarly provides a wealth of information about the types of things we are doing in the industry. You might want to read through some of the back posts, including a very intriguing one by Paul Duvall on why you should fire your best people.

For a while now, I have been meaning to write up how one of my teams used FitNesse to automate testing throughout the full lifecycle of the application development process. We even convinced business analysts and customers to think about testing from day one. I hope you enjoy my first post to TestEarly on Test-Driven Everything!

P.s. Don’t worry, I will continue to post relevant information on this blog as well.

I made the first public announcement about my new position whilst at CITCON Brussels 2007. But, today an official press release came out announcing the move.

I am very excited to announce that I have officially accepted a position at Stelligent. Stelligent’s an innovative, small company doing cutting edge consulting on Agile, Continuous Integration, Testing and Deployment.

As some of you probably remember, the folks from Stelligent are the co-authors of the new book on Continuous Integration published in Martin Fowler’s signature series at Addison-Wesley. As I teased them at CITCON Dallas 2007, the best part of the book is the forward that I wrote… ;). Of course, the entire book is a great read!

I can tell Stelligent’s at that breakthrough point…where we are ready to go from a small consultancy to a great consultancy, leading the world with new ideas and approaches. In other words, it’s right up my alley!

The final release for CruiseControl 2.7.1 has been posted to SourceForge.

Download the new release here.

Some cool things in this release include:

* Upgraded Ant bundled with CruiseControl to 1.7.0.
* RPM / Debian packager updated to include most features from the binary
distribution.
* Dashboard displays artifacts in a tree structure.
* CC-config project is now included as a link in the dashboard to use
for configuring CruiseControl.
* Basic integration mechanism for project management tools (e.g. Mingle,
Trac).
* Dashboard bug fixes.
* AllFusion Harvest plugin switch to SDK instead of command line.
* New CompoundPublisher to create groups of publishers.
* TFS support with sourcecontrol and bootstrapper.

The complete release notes are at here.

Thanks to everyone that helped make this release a success.

Contributors
* Allan Wick
* Barrett Nuzum
* Bill Wohler
* Brian Egge
* Dan Fabulich
* Dave Kilroy
* Gisbert Amm
* Ilkka Laukkanen
* Ingo Richter
* Jason R. Hull
* Jeff Jensen
* Jerome Lacoste
* Joseph Benavidez
* Lars Gehrken
* Martin Woodward
* Maxim Butov
* Nayan Hajratwala
* Nicolas Ternisien
* Paul Heaberlin
* Ram Singaram
* Robert Thornburrow
* Robert Watkins (committer emeritus)
* Szczepan Faber
* Tim Brown
* Willem Verstraeten

CruiseControl Committers
* Jason Yip
* Jeffrey Fredrick
* Hack Kampbjørn
* Dan Rollo

And the CruiseControl Enterprise Team:
* Chad Wathington
* Chris Read
* Chris Turner
* Cyndi Mitchell
* Erik Doernenburg
* Hu Kai
* Jayne Barnes
* Jenny Wong
* Jez Humble
* Jon Tirsen
* Li Guanglei
* Li Mo
* Tom Sulston
* Wang Xiaoming
* Yuan Yingjie

CITCON Asia-Pacific is schedule for June 20 & 21, 2008 in Melbourne, Australia.

CITCON, the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference, is a world-wide series of free Open Spaces events for developer-testers, tester-developers and anyone else with an interest in Continuous Integration and the type of Testing that goes along with it.
See the website for more details.
http://citconf.com/melbourne2008

We’ll be seeking volunteers to help make the conference a success. See the volunteer page for more detail.
http://citconf.com/melbourne2008/volunteer.php

And, of course, we will be looking for sponsors to make the conference possible. If you know a company interested in sponsoring, please let us know.
http://citconf.com/melbourne2008/sponsor.php

Thanks! We hope to see a lot of you in Melbourne.

I have been working with the CruiseControl Enterprise team in China for the last week.

We have been pushing hard to get the main issues fixed in preparation for CruiseControl 2.7.1 Release Candidate 4. It’s now available for download.

Try it out! We are hoping this will be the final release candidate for 2.7.1. If you have any issues, please post them to the CruiseControl devel mailing list.

The release notes for this release are included below.

CruiseControl Release Notes - 2.7.1RC4

general
======================
* Upgraded Ant that is distributed with CruiseControl to Ant version 1.7.0.
* Fix source version cruisecontrol.sh to work with cygwin (CC-694). Patch by Rex Tener.

cc-config
======================
* Fixed cc-config\3rdparty\libsystray4j.so causes build to break on Windows (CC-684). Patch by Brian Egge.
* Updated cruisecontrol’s main build to allow setting a proxy prior to downloading and including the cc-config application (CC-687). Patch by Ilkka Laukkanen.

contrib
======================

packager
———————-
* Fix build root and rpm destination for rpm target. Patch by Joseph Benavidez.
* Init script improvments based on patch by Nicolas Ternisien
* Upgrading a package will no longer overwrite users config
* Packages now depend on Java and subversion
* Package now includes dashboard and cc-config
* Now includes working connectfour sample
* Stops CruiseControl on uninstall
* Now only builds CruiseControl if needed
* .svn folder in connectfour.zip now points to correct sourceforge repository url(http://cruisecontrol.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/cruisecontrol/trunk/connectfour)
* Sample project now use the projects directory, not checkouts directory
* Sample project does not use https any more
* Sample project config now uses ProjectConfig plugin
* Get Cruise to start on boot on Debian systems

Windows Installer
———————-
* Added the -webport parameter so that Jetty will start by default, just like the binary distribution.

Documentation
======================
* Added docs for the Darcs scm plugin (CC-626).
* Fixed issue with logo appearing incorrectly placed in IE6. Patch by Jerome Lacoste.
* Add missing step in X10 publisher instructions. Patch by Bill Wohler.

dashboard
======================
NOTE: The dashboard has known display issues in Internet Explorer 7.
* Fixed display issues in IE6.
* Allowed artifacts to be kept in an arbitrary locations.
* Allowed config.xml to be kept in an arbitrary location
* Can render html/xml/txt in the browser.
* Can display the unit test output for passed builds.
* Enhanced the dashboard to display artifacts directories as tree structure.
* Added the cc-config (http://cc-config.sourceforge.net/) application so that it can be included in the dashboard (CC-658). Patch by Allan Wick.
* Allowed artifacts to be shown and downloaded in case of a failed build
* Allowed project name to contain hyphen (-)
* Allowed integration with project management tools
* Allowed using dashboard-config.xml to configure the dashboard
* Deprecated the way to configure the dashboard via web.xml
* Modificationset and Bootstrapping are no longer considered as building status in summary section.
* fixed unresolved velocity variable $build.build.duration in build detail page.
* Error details are missing in the dashboard (CC-665).
* Dashboard can’t parse logfiles with testsuite elements without time attribute (CC-670).
* Dashboard can’t parse logfiles with non-default date formats (CC-671).
* Fixed case where long project name would not wrap within Toolkit and Tooltip divs.
* Fixed layout problem with tabs when wrapping.
* Added Errors and Warnings tab. Removed Errors tab. Moved the test errors and test failures to Tests tab.
* Implemented the capability of displaying the status of last build while building
* Fixed the problem that cursor in IE6 does not show as hand for the link.
* Fixed the problem that timer does not stop after build finished.
* Fixed the problem that the hyperlink in building status turns brown.
* Fixed the problem that the color of text was red in IE6.
* Fixed the problem of allowforcebuild flag in dashboard-config.xml not accepting “true” or “yes” values as true.
* Added validation on project name to disallow the special characters in the set “!£$%^&*()+=#~?/<>[]{}`@:;\|’
* Made the colour of force build icon correct when a build changes from inactive to active.
* Include the zipped log files in the build detail page.
* Switched the active build icon to a transparent image that does not interfer with the background color.
* Changed the anthome to ant-1.7.0 when adding new projects via the dashboard.

build loop
======================

AllFusion Harvest
———————-
* Added support for CA AllFusion Harvest via SDK (CC-513). Patch by Robert Thornburrow and Nayan Hajratwala. Removed previous command-line based support.

AntBuilder/Bootstrapper/Publisher
———————-
* Add ant propertyfile attribute (CC-664). Patch by Willem Verstraeten.
* Provide support for configuring additional Ant libs and listeners (CC-542). Patch by Dan Fabulich.
* Provide support for displaying current build messages when using ant logger.

Builder Progress messages
———————-
* Add a Progress signaling api to the builders: , , , , and CCDist (CC-686).
Experimental impl for builder to showProgress can be disabled with showProgress=false.
Progess messages are shown on the reporting/jsp project pages, below the project state text.
* Fix side effect of loading ant jars where possible by using -lib arg with full logger jar name. (CC-686) Patch by Yuan Yingjie, Hu Kai

build.sh/release.sh scripts
———————-
* Set JAVA_HOME properly on MacOSX (CC-681). Patch by Ingo Richter

CommandLine and Process exec handling
———————-
* Close process.outputStream to avoid deadlocks. (CC-527) Reported by Jason R. Hull

CompoundPublisher
———————-
* New publisher which allows multiple publishers internally. (CC-656)

ConcurrentVersionsSystem/CVSBootstrapper
———————-
* Added the ability to set the cvs compression level (CC-579). Patch by Maxim Butov.

default-plugins
———————-
* Added darcs to the default plugins (CC-626).

Main
———————-
* Put the ccname command line parameter back, after being inadvertently removed (CC-651). Patch by Lars Gehrken.

MavenMapper
———————-
* MavenMapper extracts the email address for a certain committing user as configured in Mavens project.xml or pom.xml (M1 or M2) (CC-618). Contributed by Gisbert Amm.

Plugins
———————-
* Introduce a “ControllerAware” interface for plugins (CC-680). Patch by committer emeritus Robert Watkins.

Project
———————-
* Added a property named “buildforced” that will get passed to builders for conditional control (CC-653). Patch by Dave Kilroy.

PropertiesMapper
———————-
* Refactored validation for cleanliness and removing duplication with ValidationHelper (CC-642). Patch by Gisbert Amm.

Schedule
———————-
* Added trap for zero or less interval and updated docs to indicate that they are not legitimate values (CC-652). Suggested by Jeff Jensen.

SVN/SVNBootstrapper
———————-
* svnrevision property set incorrectly (CC-683). Patch by Tim Brown and Brian Egge.
* svnbootstrapper documentation incorrectly lists “checkExternals” flag. Must be moved to the “svn” modificationset element (CC-678). Reported by Ram Singaram
* Improve error message when there is no valid localWorkingCopy for SVNBootstrapper (CC-679). Patch by Robert Watkins.
* Set svnrepository property so that it can be used by builders, etc (CC-639). Patch by Brian Egge.
* Prevent “premature” SVN modifications being detected with new attribute ‘useLocalRevision’ (CC-677). Patch by Robert Watkins.

TFS/TFSBootstrapper
———————-
* TFS Support - new sourcecontrol and bootstrapper plugins (CC-666). Patch by Martin Woodward.

TimeBuild
———————-
* Fixed problem when you set time build to 23:55 and the first modifcationcheck occur at 0:01 you won’t get an modification (CC-650). Patch by Lars Gehrken.

UCM
———————-
* Fixed ClearCase/UCM mode when rmver event found in history (CC-660). Patch by Paul Heaberlin.

Veto
———————-
* Improvement to provide detail in log as to what changes caused the veto (CC-676). Patch by Barrett Nuzum.

Reporting (legacy)
======================

* Force build when already building could end up not going into the build queue(CC-436). Patch by Szczepan Faber

http://citconf.com/brussels2007/volunteer.php

CITCON Brussels 2007 is approaching quickly…October 19 & 20. We are now seeking volunteers to help make this event a success!

We have positions open for all types of people. Please take a look at the volunteering page. You don’t have to be a software geek to help out and get all the cool volunteer benefits!

CITCON (Continuous Integration and Testing Conference) brings together people from every corner of the software development industry to discuss Continuous Integration and the type of Testing that goes along with it.

It’s an exhilarating conference. Be a part of it!

Sincerely,

Paul Julius

CITCON Organization Committee

Bret Pettichord just told me about an exciting open space conference that he, and a bunch of other people are organizing in Austin, Texas. It is called Alt.Net.

The website is not up as of the writing of this post, but Scott Bellware provides the logistical details as:

“The ALT.NET conference will take place in Austin, TX from 5PM on Friday, Oct 5th, through noon on Sunday, October 7th at the St. Edwards University Professional Education Center.”

In a post by Dave Laribee, one of the conference hosts, he answers the question “What does it mean to be Alt.Net?” as:

1. You’re the type of developer who uses what works while keeping an eye out for a better way.
2. You reach outside the mainstream to adopt the best of any community: Open Source, Agile, Java, Ruby, etc.
3. You’re not content with the status quo. Things can always be better expressed, more elegant and simple, more mutable, higher quality, etc.
4. You know tools are great, but they only take you so far. It’s the principles and knowledge that really matter. The best tools are those that embed the knowledge and encourage the principles (e.g. Resharper.)

I am excited that the Open Space conference format is spreading in the software industry. The mission of the Open Information Foundation, founded by Jeffrey Fredrick and myself, is to help these types of events which endeavor to make the sharing of information available to anyone, without financial impediment. We have been hosting CITCON, around the globe, to further this goal.

If you can make it to Austin for this event, I am sure it will be a very educational, enlightening and fun event!