CruiseControl.NET : Splitting the build
This page last changed on Nov 25, 2004 by orogers.

As your codebase grows and your build starts to take an increasingly long time, it often makes sense to think about splitting your build process into a set of dependent builds (<shamless-plug>check out my paper "Scaling Continuous Integration" from XP2004 for some tips on how to do this</shamless-plug>). Currently, the main way to go about triggering dependent builds is to set up a separate project containing the secondary build process that you want to run. It can be triggered by changes to a file or folder that is being monitored by a FileSystemSourceControl. Here's an example of what your ccnet.config file might look like:

<cruisecontrol>
	<project name="developerBuild">
		<sourcecontrol type="cvs">
			...
		</sourcecontrol>
		<build type="nant">
			<buildfile>main.build</buildfile>
			<targets>
				<target>compile</target>
				<target>unit.test</target>
				<target>publish.distribution</target>
			</targets>
		</build>
		<triggers><pollingInterval seconds="60" /></triggers>
		...
	</project>
	<project name="customerBuild">
		<sourcecontrol type="filesystem">
			<repositoryRoot>C:\project\distribution</repositoryRoot>
		</sourcecontrol>
		<build type="nant">
			<buildfile>integration.build</buildfile>
			<targets>
				<target>acceptance.test</target>
				<target>ncover</target>
			</targets>			
		</build>
		<triggers><pollingInterval seconds="300" /></triggers>
		...
	</project>
</cruisecontrol>

The targets are meant to be illustrative of the types of things that you might want to put into the different builds.

As of CCNet 0.7.1, there is a new publisher called ForceBuildPublisher that can be used to force build for a project on a local or remote ccnet server. The ForceBuildPublisher can be set to force a dependent build depending on the status of the integration: whether it succeeded, failed or generated an exception. Here's what the above ccnet.config file would look like if you used this publisher:
<cruisecontrol>
	<project name="developerBuild">
		<sourcecontrol type="cvs">
			...
		</sourcecontrol>
		<build type="nant">
			<buildfile>main.build</buildfile>
			<targets>
				<target>compile</target>
				<target>unit.test</target>
				<target>publish.distribution</target>
			</targets>
		</build>
		<triggers><pollingInterval seconds="60" /></triggers>
		<publishers>
			<forcebuild>
				<project>customerBuild</project>
			</forcebuild>
			<serverUri>
				tcp://localhost:21234/CruiseManager.rem
			</serverUri>
		</publishers>
		...
	</project>
	<project name="customerBuild">
		<sourcecontrol type="test" />		<!-- unfortunately necessary as sourcecontrol is a required element -->
		<build type="nant">
			<buildfile>integration.build</buildfile>
			<targets>
				<target>acceptance.test</target>
				<target>ncover</target>
			</targets>			
		</build>
		...					<!-- no trigger is required as the build will always be forced -->
	</project>
</cruisecontrol>

Note: that you can easily change the serverUri property to refer to a ccnet server running on a remote machine if you want to distribute your build process.

See also Enterprise Continuous Integration with Binary Dependencies example for some other examples demonstrating how to do this.
Document generated by Confluence on Jun 26, 2005 17:23