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6 Big Visible Continuous Integration Tools

by Julian Simpson on August 18, 2009

I love Information Radiators. You can have all the Twitter plugins you like, but unless you have the updates on the wall, you’re missing something. Here’s a few examples:

  • Green Screen: Martin Andrews just released this. It’s a Sinatra app, and looks like it works for Hudson – perhaps with some tweaking it’ll work elsewhere.[Ruby]
  • CruiseControl Monitor: Sudhindra Rao wrote this for any CruiseControl. I covered it here. [Ruby]
  • Big Visible Cruise: This works for CruiseControl.NET, and runs on Windows. I haven’t had the pleasure.[.NET]
  • Hudson has a plugin to do it, of course.[Java]
  • Radiators: Marco Jansen wrote this in 2005. It’s the earliest example that I’ve seen. I daresay it needs some love by now.[Java]
  • Update: Sam Newman has been flexing his Scala muscles and wrote Big Visible Wall recently. Don’t tell him this, but his code’s generally worth checking out.

I find that I always want to provide other project metrics as well. There’ll be a point at which I’ll start hacking to add more information. This is how I ended up with the radiator at Guardian Unlimited.

Know of others? What works with your CI server? Comment here and I’ll update this post.

Image thanks to ninnet.

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  • James Summerton
    Another plug :)

    Check out Cradiator (http://cradiator.codeplex.com/) a fork of BigVisibleCruise with a load of enhancements.

    It has full support for CruiseControl (Java, .NET, Ruby) and now TeamCity as well.

    Some of the key new features:

    * Shows breakers of a build (if broken) or the volunteer to fix the build (for CCNet requires 1.4.3 or greater)
    * New skin (StackPhoto)
    * Filter by Category (in addition to Project Name)
    * Show progress/status when making connection to Cruise server (configurable)
    * Color gradients for visual appeal
    * Wav files can be played on specific events (currently 'NewlyBrokenBuild' and 'NewlyFixedBuild')
    * Speech synthesis - Cradiator says which build is broken (handy for those with sore necks who can't check the big screen) - uses SAPI support on Windows. The text to say and the voice itself is configurable - so you can Download your own voices
    * Show a Countdown of how many seconds to go before refreshing status
    * Added a Debug-mode facility to allow developers to replace the Cruise Web Service XML with their own XML - handy for UI testing/experimentation and screenshot/demos
    * Configuration changes:

    1. An app restart is not required for settings to take effect
    2. Config file can even be edited while the app is running (ie is 'watched' for changes and applied immediately or at the next refresh interval)

    * Settings dialog (for people with text-editor phobias)
    * Logging (using log4net) - can be configured via app.config
  • I've built another system composed of 2 parts :
    - the "green/red screen" : http://build-status.appspot.com/
    - and a "trigger", currently only for TeamCity (but you can easily develop your own trigger according your build system)

    For now, a big limitation about the "screen" is that it's only display 1 project at a time (I've planned to fix that limitation in the future).
  • Blatantly shameless plug: I have built a couple of radiators using Quartz Composer (Mac-only, unfortunately) and created a template so you can build your own:

    http://www.lixo.org/archives/2008/07/05/informa...

    It's by no means "complete", but I would definitely welcome some help, seeing I don't have much time to mess with it, or that much experience with Quartz Composer.
  • Cool to see all these tools out there.

    Back at Agitar we tried a bunch of different approaches; lava lamps remain my favorite. (The ambient orb looked cool but was kind of a dud in practice.)

    Anyone looking to find more can try searching on "extreme feedback device".
  • Back in the day (~2004), JD (http://robotics.usc.edu/~jnaneshd/pmwiki.php) used to put together a custom build tower using ruby scripts, aluminium struts and LEDs. One level of the tower would light up for every stage of the build that passed.

    I don't think we have an pictures though, more's the pity.
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