The middle way works well on one of our servers. We didn't want to build on every change, so we set up a separate cruise project that monitors the build tools separately from the code builds. It's scheduled to run at the end of the day, and it installs all updated tools when it spots a change.
If the build fails, or causes the code builds to fail, the developers investigate and decide whether to pull the new tool(s) out, fix their build or whatever. The toolkits aren't updated a lot - maybe once a fortnight. If it was more often, this might not be too useful for us. It was also very useful when I was moving the buildserver - I was able to install the absolute minimum (cruise, nant and the cruise config files) and just force a build to get everything else loaded on the machine. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Anderson, Kelly Sent: 18 October 2005 04:08 To: nant-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [Nant-users] Install Tools There is not really a right or wrong answer to this, but I am curious as to whether there is any point to installing tools as part of a build process. For example, one could go to the length of installing the compiler, code generators, revision control system, cruise control and basically everything except maybe NAnt from your build script. It would have the advantage of setting up the whole environment, and being able to have the environment be setup correctly from any machine that runs the script. This would be helpful if you had to recreate an old environment. It would obviously have the disadvantage of running much more slowly. I suppose a middle ground would be to have a separate NAnt script/target that did these sorts of installs, and you only run it when you are on a new machine, or something has changed... If you just expect the tools to be installed, then you have a job setting up a new machine, virtual machine or whatever. If you do this often, it might be worth automating, and it might be as easy to write a NAnt script to do this as to document the process. Any thoughts? What do you do to manage your tool sets? A similar question comes up as to whether to do a clean before a build every time, or just some of the time (say the nightly build) or just when manually requested. These clean builds are useful from time to time especially if files have been deleted from revision control, and you want to make sure everything still works, but they can also be very slow for a Continuous Integration environment. -Kelly E-Mail messages may contain viruses, worms, or other malicious code. By reading the message and opening any attachments, the recipient accepts full responsibility for taking protective action against such code. Sender is not liable for any loss or damage arising from this message. The information in this e-mail is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee(s). Access to this e-mail by anyone else is unauthorized. ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl _______________________________________________ Nant-users mailing list Nant-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nant-users ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl _______________________________________________ Nant-users mailing list Nant-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nant-users
