A continuous integration process involves automatic building and testing with tools like Ant and JUnit. These tools need a tool that will manage and control the build process - this is where Cruise Control comes in.

CruiseControl, an open source tool from SourceForge, is a framework for a continuous build process. It provides an easy-to-use tool that integrates Ant, JUnit, and others to provide a simple utility that builds and tests your software throughout the development cycle.

For a complete build process you might want to clean the build directory, fetch sources from the source configuration tool, compile sources, package applications, start the application server, deploy the packaged applications, perform tests, generate reports, and clean up. Simpler (intermediate) build processes can pass the clean task and part of the test tasks.

All of these tasks should be part of your Ant build configuration.

For an easy transition between different dev/test/prod environments it's helpful if you use different configuration settings for your application properties and application server settings and let Ant prepare these settings for you. For example, for the build.xml:

<filter token="server.domain"
value="${server.domain}"/>
<filter token="server.listen.port"
value="${server.listen.port}"/>
<filter token="server.name" value="${server.name}"/>

And for the config.xml:

<Domain Name="@server.domain@">
...
<Server ListenPort="@server.listen.port@"
Name="@server.name@">

where all server.* properties reside in different configuration files for use with any different environment (dev.properties, test.properties, etc.)

This will put you in a position where you could run continuous build process without human hands.

Now, let's see how CruiseControl helps us with these builds.

CruiseControl, release 2.0, is more flexible and open. Its building blocks are plug-ins (that you can always extend or replace). It is shipped with several plug-ins that, in most cases, will do the work without the need for an update. The provided plug-ins are grouped into five types:

Fowler, Martin. Continuous Integration. www.martinfowler.com/articles/ continuousIntegration.html

Published Dec. 17, 2002 — Reads 11,929
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About Ronen Lewit
Ronen Lewit is an IT expert specializing in enterprise software development. He has an extensive knowledge of state-of-the-art technologies in the J2EE and RDBMS worlds. Ronen is a consultant to corporations on building robust and scalable infrastructures and applications.