CruiseControl.net with multiple languages? - language-agnostic

I just started working in an environment that uses multiple programming languages, doesn't have source control and doesn't have automated deploys.
I am interested in recommending VSS for source control and using CruiseControl.net for automated deploys but I have only used CC.NET with ASP.NET applications. Is it possible to use CC.NET to deploy python, php, ASP.NET and ??? apps all from the same instance?

Yes you can.
CC .net is written in .Net but can handle any project. Your project langage does not matter, you can still use Batch, Powershell, Nant or MsBuild scripts. You may also use Cruise Control or Hudson, as you like.
As for the source control provider, I would prefer svn (or even git) but that's more a matter of habbits : from my point of view VSS is too linked to VS and I don't like the lock on check out by default behaviour.

VSS is unsafe for any source and is damn near useless outside visual studio. And cruise control is painful to learn and make work at best. Your heart is in the right place, but you probably want slightly different technical solutions. For SCM, you probably want either subversion (cf VisualSVN Server) or Mercurial (on IIS7). For continuious integration, I'd look at TeamCity first or Hudson second. Either of which is vastly superior to CCNet in terms of ease of use.

Related

Get Monodevelop to use the downloaded GtkSharp

I installed the GtkSharp 3.22.24.36 package via Project > Add NuGet Packages..., which completed successfully. But now Monodevelop can't decide which version of GtkSharp to use (3.22.24.36 or the in-built one, 2.12).
If I uncheck gtk-sharp in the Edit references... dialog, it tells me that I can't use the UI designer without it.
How do I get Monodevelop to use the downloaded GtkSharp (3.22)?
MonoDevelop comes with a custom version of Gtk2 + Xwt bundled. If you plan to use Gtk3, then the designer must be deactivated, since it won't work with Gtk3.
My advice, anyway, no matter which toolkit you use, is to avoid using the designer. As soon as you involve the designer, you code heavily depends on the IDE you use (Visual Studio, MonoDevelop, NetBeans... you name it).
Creating user interfaces "by hand" is no longer traumatic as it was in the 90's with the Windows API. For example, you can find a very good Gtk# tutorial in ZetCode.
User Interface Toolkits are actually very similar, they change the name of widgets and sometimes provide a slightly different layout, but they are all mostly the same, no matter it is WinForms or Gtk(for C#), Swing (Java), or Qt (C++ and others).
I know its an older question but things changed. Abandon MonoDevelop, just use the .NET Standard bound implementation of GtkSharp. You can then literally design interface using glade xml files, using official Glade application from GTK+. You can find it here.
With the current push from MS to abandon Framework in favor of Core, we finally succumbed when we figured out they will kill Framework (which they just did with .NET 5 announcement), but we also used the opportunity to investigate other options for our ports of LoBs to core. We discovered GtkSharp as WinForms replacement and AvaloniaUI as WPF replacement, which not only work perfectly but also truly work cross-platform. We ported several applications already and actually moved more then half of business work stations from Windows to Linux.

Are there any Build tools designed with Mercurial in mind?

I've just moved a large project out of a legacy version control system, and into Mercurial. I'm now faced with the task (opportunity!) of overhauling my old build system to work with this new source control system.
Are there any good build systems that:
Can build projects in a variety of languages and compilers
Integrate well with Mercurial (For example, knowing to pull certain revisions or tagged versions of sub repositories for dependency management (as opposed to continuous integration.))
Extendable (we have several auditing steps that we need to perform before and after our build)
Are easy to use
that are already out there? As much fun as building and maintaining yet another build system might be, I'd rather reuse a mature, stable product and get back to developing my own code. :) If no tool exists with Mercurial in mind, what else might meet the requirements? What else might be out there that I'm forgetting?
Usually your build tool/system and your continuous integration system are separate, and the later is the one that knows about your DVCS system. In my setup the build tool is sbt (formerly ant) and the CI system is Jenkins (which I highly recommend).
The CI system speaks Mercurial, but it doesn't have to speak much of it. Mercurial lets you create URLs that track a specific named branch or tag, and so long as your CI system can clone/pull you're set. Once the CI system has updated to the version you want to build then it triggers you build system, which needs only look at the working directory.

Continuous Integration without the "Build"

Our group uses Visual Sourcesafe as a file repository for all of our "content" (HTML, CSS, Javascript, JSP). None of it requires building or compilation but we would like to automate the copying of it to a Unix dev server upon check-in.
I have used Cruisecontrol.NET in the past for CI at other companies but it was for .NET. What would be the easiest way to achieve our current requirements? Would using CruiseControl.NET be overkill or even a good idea? Thanks in advance.
-Sean
This sounds like overkill for a CI tool.
Visual SourceSafe and other version control systems should have hooks allowing you to automate a simple file copy operation.
From http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa302175.aspx
Use events, such as OnBeforeCheckout
or OnAfterCheckIn to automate your
process.
Whether this makes sense for you depends on a couple of factors. If you are talking about a large, geographically team with only change based deployment then yes, those are valid concerns. If you only have a few local developers and you deploy the world on each copy operation, then no, I don't think you'd need a CI tool.
This is not to say other reasons may influence you to use a CI tool, testing for instance. Your problem might also be solved by running a polling script on the Unix box to sync the source control with the dev server. I guess the main point is, if you are deploying all non-compiled software, why do you have a separate source control and dev server? You're deployment can be done by a source control tool. If it is only for backup, there are plenty of existing solutions for that problem.
Sean,
Our AnthillPro customers do this kind of thing pretty frequently (and we even do it internally when new content is committed for our website). It's a really good idea, totally appropriate for a CI tool, and you can get quality feedback if you wire in some automated functional / regression tests.
Eric
You could try using Hudson http://hudson-ci.org/
It is easy to configure, is completely GUI (unless you want to go into the details), and has a plugin for Visual Sourcecafe http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/Visual+SourceSafe+Plugin
While CI would probably be overkill for what you are trying to do, since Hudson is all GUI and easy to use, you would not spend a lot of time just trying to configure it.
Hudson also has plugins for copying stuff over to other systems, and so it would be easy to deploy your content to another system.
If you are worried about the process, get in touch with a hosted CI provider, such as MikeCI, a quick message on their support board will get you the answer. I don't see why triggering a "build" can't be replaced with copy and paste!

Is there an API or tool that can automate software updating?

Is there any API or tool that can automate software updating? It should take care of checking for updates from a URL for a provided list of files and downloading and replacing the ones that need updating. It would also be nice if it contained an authentication module so that only authorized parties could access the updates. It should be language-agnostic - takes a list of files without extra knowledge except their versions and replaces them with newly downloaded copies if on the site there are newer versions.
I'm specifically interested in something for the Windows platform, that would run on Win Xp to Win 7.
This makes me think about apt-get ...
take a look here, as well: Is there an auto-update framework for C++/Win32/MFC (like Sparkle)?
I did see some articles a while back about embedding subversion into your application to manage version control.
Edit:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/svn.developer.html
Subversion has a modular design: it's implemented as a collection of libraries written in C. Each library has a well-defined purpose and application programming interface (API), and that interface is available not only for Subversion itself to use, but for any software that wishes to embed or otherwise programmatically control Subversion. Additionally, Subversion's API is available not only to other C programs, but also to programs written in higher-level languages such as Python, Perl, Java, and Ruby."
Just saw UpdateNode launching a pretty cool update and messaging system. It seems to be cross platform and free for Open Source.
UPDATE, did some further analysis on that, posted at: https://stackoverflow.com/a/22528011/3257300
For windows, I'd use Google Update, also known as omaha.
Since you didn't tag this question as windows, I'd also mention a UpdateEngine for Mac.
And (best of all) apt, which is available for free on all Debian-based Linux and BSD distributions, like Ubuntu
There is open source project WIPT inspired by APT of Debian Linux.
Head over to Launchpad and use a PPA: it is a Debian/Ubuntu repository management platform. Of course this is not really platform independent but it is language wise :-)
You should take a look at ClickThrough, I don't know much about it but it sounds similar to what you're looking for. As for authorization, I would imagine this to be handled by your webserver based on the URL.
InstallShield has an offering. Never used it but researched it a few years back but we decided on a roll your own solution.
InstallShield Update Manager
InstallShield Update Service
You didn't state what platform you needed this for. The easiest way I can think of doing this is with subversion using rsync.
The concept is to write a post-commit hook for subversion. This script would update a "working folder" on the repository machine and then use rsync to update the differences to another machine.
Data protection and authentication would be set up using rsync over ssh.
If this is for windows, you could try doing the same with cygwin installs on the two machines.
Good luck.
If you use .NET, I'm a happy customer of AppLife Update
CRONw is a scheduled execution service for Windows. (Sorry, I can't link it, I'm apparently limited to 1 as a new user. It's hosted on Sourceforge.)
Powershell is a Windows scripting language (Microsoft-official) that allows you to do most system administration operations you could conceivably want to do. It is very easy to pick up even if you haven't worked with it before.
I would say your best bet is to write a simple update script in Powershell and, optionally, set it up as a crontask so you don't have to manually execute it.
IIRC, Powershell is an optional install on XP, and CRONw requires you be running a 32-bit system. You didn't say, so I'd guess you're doing 32-bit, but the alternative bears mentioning.
And in all this, I'm assuming that the URLs you're describing are designed for this purpose - if they're not and you don't own them, it will rapidly become more suffering than you're willing to bear. (Making a computer navigate a human-readable website usually does.)

Buildfarms : Options

We use Incredibuild here to compile our code in a distributed fashion. I was wondering if there are any open source (or free) alternatives to use on a home network?
Failing that, are there any other simple solutions with good integration with Visual Studio out there?
EDIT: I should say that I am quite happy to get my hands dirty and manually configure everything on each machine should that be required.
I can't look past TeamCity as a CI environment - among other features it allows multiple build agents to be linked together in one build grid.
Oh and it also has excellent integration with VS and SubVersion. And it's free to use, up to a maximum of 20 build configurations and 2 build agents.