Hi,
May I know what is the difference between finalbuilder and cruisecontrol.net?
Thank you
Hi Chan,
The two products are quite different.
FinalBuilder is a graphical build tool with an IDE that allows you to use drag and drop to build an advanced automated build process. Take a look at the Products->Features page on this web site to see all the different compilers, version control systems, developer tools, and systems tasks that FinalBuilder can take care of. FinalBuilder includes a scheduler which can start builds at given times, and there is a (very soon to be released) FinalBuilder Server product which allows you to set up a web-based build server to control your build process.
CruiseControl.NET is a continuous integration tool. It allows you to run a continuous integration server which monitors a version control repository for changes and starts a build each time changes are checked in. CruiseControl.NET does not include its own build engine to perform the actual building. There is a FinalBuilder CruiseControl.NET task which allows you to use FinalBuilder as the build engine to perform continuous integration with CruiseControl.NET (many of our users make use of this feature.)
Please let me know if you need any more explanation. Perhaps if you explain what kind of tool you need ,we can help recommend a solution.
Regards,
Angus
Hi,
Actually I am looking for a tool to automate my deployment process and also continuous integration. Below are the tasks I would like to be automated.
- Get latest version of source code from source control system.<o:p></o:p>
- Recompile our project.<o:p></o:p>
- If compile OK, build deployment package (setup file) using InstallShield.<o:p></o:p>
- If compile failed, send us email with error log.<o:p></o:p>
- Run our automated testing script, such as UI testing, unit testing and etc (integrated with our automated testing tool – TestComplete/NUnit).<o:p></o:p>
- If any testing failed, send email to notify error.<o:p></o:p>
- Copy setup file to specified folder to ready for manual test.
Thank you
Are there any plans to allow FB Server to do continuous integration? You could probably already fake it, by scheduling a project to run every minute that checks for changes in the library and if so, runs another project. But a real solution?
Steve
Hi,
My initial plan is to run the actions mentioned once per day.
What is the best practise? I am new to this area.
Thank you for advice.
Chan,
> My initial plan is to run the actions mentioned once per day.
FinalBuilder will certainly let you do all the tasks you mention, and it’s scheduling (both in IDE and FB Server) allows for very flexible scheduling.
The only reason you would need to look at CC.Net is if you want to trigger your builds based on some event in your version control system. Say, for example, you need to run a build any time your .sln file is checked in, then CC.Net would watch your version control system for this file to be checked in and run a build (and as Angus mentioned, this could be FinalBuilder).
hth.
BTW, if you do decide that you want to use the CruiseControl.NET task to trigger FinalBuilder when the source repository changes, then you can find some documentation at this page:
http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CCNET/FinalBuilder+Task
Hi,
Is it a need to have CC for continuous integration? Can FB do it?
Hi Chan,
If by Continuous Integration you mean "daily builds" or "regular builds" or "frequent builds" then you do not need CC.NET, FB can do it.
If by Continuous Integration you mean "every time a change is checked in, a build automatically starts right then" (this is the technical definition of Continuous Integration), then you will need CC.NET. Although this feature is coming in a future version.
Regards,
Angus
Hi Chan,
My plan would be to first just use FinalBuilder + Server. Do scheduled builds once or twice a day. And give the team members a posibility to explicitly start a build when needed via the FinalBuilder Server dashboard. Then, when you feel you need it, set up a CruiseControl environment that calls the same FB project.
Maybe round the time you are ready for CC, someone has done a port from the specific SourceControl trigger that is inside CruiseControl to a FinalBuilder trigger.
Oh, when someone does for vss(visual sourcesafe), please let me know :-)
Jaap.
Hi guys - sorry to thread hijack 
We’re having problems with our CC.NET/FB 5 setup. We merge our FB build log with the CC.NET log and we’re getting out of memory errors when the CC.NET XML transformer is trying to prepare the email for distribution to your team. It is fairly obvious that these logs are getting too large. It seems that CC.NET retrieves the entire FB log from all previous builds when all we need is the log from the current build.
Could someone suggest a solution to this? How can we grab only the relevant portion of the FB log?
Thanks
Simon
Hi Simon,
You can use the Export Log action to export the current FB build log to an XML file, and then use the CC.NET File Merge task to merge the XML file into the email. Each XML file exported by Export Log should be just the current build.
If these log files are still too large, there are options on Export Log to reduce the amount of detail which is exported.
Please let me know if you need any more help getting this to work.
Regards,
Angus