Continous Integration for web application project

Hi all,
I'm planning to put in place automated builds / continuous integration
for quite large web application. The code is in several
technologies: .Net (C#), SQL Server (including some sprocs/functions),
JavaScript (heavy on ajax), Flex (connecting to .net services). Any
pointers for a beginner?

Miika wrote:

> I'm planning to put in place automated builds / continuous integration
> for quite large web application. The code is in several
> technologies: .Net (C#), SQL Server (including some sprocs/functions),
> JavaScript (heavy on ajax), Flex (connecting to .net services). Any
> pointers for a beginner?

cruisecontrol.rb doesn't suck.

How are your unit tests? Can you run them all from a command line? And
what's your version controller?

At work, we didn't have a test server, and our test suites got kind'a long.
To integrate, we would run a command line (rake ci m='what we did'), and
then take a break. This violates the rule of Continuous Integration.

So we installed cruisecontrol.rb on a server, and gave each project an
environmental variable option called SLOW_TESTS. I put

if SLOW_TESTS=='true'

around the slowest test cases, and then enabled that only in CCrb.

You can run 'SLOW_TESTS=true rake test' or 'rake ci' from a command line, if
you want.

Next, I wrote a shell command called 'int'. You call it with

int what I did

It calls 'svn up' to pull in new changes. Then it runs 'rake test:recent' to
run any test suite changed within the last 10 minutes (including any that
just up-ed). Then it calls svn ci -m'what I did'.

When CCrb sees the change, it svn up's it, then runs all the tests, slowly.

When a test run fails, I get...

- an e-mail
- a Growl notification on both our Mac pairstations
- an RSS event.

I also configured our CCrb to collect statistics over time. That's a work in
progress; here's a report on it:

http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog...rol_charts.html

Now the question, regarding your alternative tool set, is how much of this
stuff will work out-of-the-box for you, and how much you will need to stitch
together yourselves!

--
Phlip

> Any pointers for a beginner?

Take it one step at a time.  There are ways to test SQL, Javascript,
web services, etc, but if the tests end up being flaky (intermittent
failures on the build server which don't happen on workstations are
all too common), then people will just learn to ignore the build
server.  So I'd start with something simple, for example in roughly
this order (with a few ws+ of solid functioning before moving on to
the next step):

1.  The C# code compiles

2.  Fast tests (defined as C# tests which don't need to talk to SQL
Server, involve javascript, etc)

3.  Add tests which talk to SQL Server

4.  Add jsunit tests for the javascript code

5.  Add Selenium tests for the javascript plus the server

Put up a visible green/red indicator in your team room (for example, a
monitor continuously showing a web page which shows green/red big
enough so you can see it across the room).

I don't know, did you have any more specific questions?  Most of this
is fairly well covered in articles/books (Paul Duvall's springs to
mind, although I've only read parts of it).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321336380/