I am a Qt/C++ developer. I would like to setup a continuous integration environment whereby after committing the source code, it triggers a build process that build the code for the 3 platforms I'm using:
Linux
OS X
Win32
If possible, how do I setup such environment. Any hints or links are welcome.
I've read around about Jenkins, but I can't find any good tutorial for it.
I also suggest Jenkins for several reasons:
It will run on all of the platforms you listed.
It can be configured to start a build when the repository is updated (hint: configure the Job to "Poll SCM" and you won't have to muck with your SCM tool to get it to tell Jenkins to start building).
It provides good support (mostly through plugins) for Unit Testing. [You're project is doing unit testing, right?]
The price is right
A bigger issue is going to have is that AFAIK, Qt doesn't really do cross-compiling for other platforms well. Using Jenkins (and the appropriate plugins), you should be able to solve this.
One method that comes quickly to mind is to have an instance of Jenkins on each platform. Each instance is responsible for building the version for its own platform. At the end of the build, the created artifacts are all put into a common, shared location.
Jenkins supports this feature via plugins for all major source control systems. If you seriously considering using Jenkins (and I would highly recommend it), consider buying John Ferguson Smart's Jenkins: The Definitive Guide.
Two solutions coming to my mind:
BuildBot
BuildBot is a highly customizable continuous integration system written in Python. The master component offers a nice web-based GUI to monitor and trigger builds; slave components are put on the target machines (usually virtual machines but they could be the Mac laptop of one of the developers). Docs are good enough to build up a basic system, customization could be a little tricky (at least it was for me). Using commit/push hooks provided by VC systems you can easily activate the master and trigger builds across the slaves. It also supports incremental builds (a must if your project is big).
CDash
Developed by the authors of CMake, CDash is a web application collecting builds coming from across the network, not exactly what you asked for but I think it's worth a try. Very powerful if you have a team of developers who could continuosly submit build result on their machines to the server (and if you use CMake it's almost transparent). You cannot trigger builds from the server as Buildbot does, but you could setup a bunch of VM with a cron which checks for changes and in case performs the build and sends results to CDash
Sure it's possible. Most of the version control systems are able to execute custom script on server side. Some of them (git, for example), has hooks to achieve the same locally. Have a look at git's post-commit hook.
All you need is to create a script that will trigger cross-platform builds.
Most version control systems allow post-commit hooks to allow you to kick off events like builds. Alternatively build systems can be configured to regularly poll a source control repository and manage their own build scheduling (this is how we use Jenkins).
Something to bear in mind is how long it will take to do a complete build across platforms and the typical number of check-ins in that interval. You might find batching check-ins a better way of doing continuous integration builds if you have an fair sized team or limited build server resources. Otherwise your build system could quickly end up trying to play catch up.
As for whether it is possible to build on all target platforms, that depends on your tool chain.
Related
I would like to ask about your experience with build server for embedded systems. What are you using (if any), and what are good and bad sides.
We are developing mainly for microcontrollers without operating system.
At this moment I'm trying to use Jenkins and my build is running. But I have some problem with projects structure. When I want all plugins working, than I need flat job structure. But we have few projects that are developed in parallel, and then job view start to be messy.
I've tried folders, but than some plugins stopped working.
I would like to build a pipeline, that is running sequential, but have parallel jobs inside. eg. Commit stage have: compile, lint check, style check, unit tests. all of them can run in parallel and when all are successful next stage is executed.
What I need from Build server at this moment:
build pipeline support
user authorization based on LDAP
parallel job execution
hierarchical projects (projects/configurations groups)
reports from xUnit, Lint, Compiler warnings, Robot framework.
slave/agents support, tags for slave
privileges based on ldap groups
privileges per group/project
I'm opened for any suggestions, open source and commercial.
I was looking at Bamboo on videos look very nice but I didn't try it yet.
We have two development teams, that are developing different projects. It could be nice to have projects grouped for teams and privileges for group. Members of one group shouldn't modify builds of other. But it is more "nice to have" than "must have".
TeamCity
I tried to use TeamCity. Building build pipeline is easier than in Jenkins, just click add Step.
One thing that I found difficult is making steps in parallel in one configuration. For example after commit I would like to run in parallel Lint, Unit tests, Compile to save some time. I found solution, but it make pipeline harder to view and maintain.
TeamCity support multiple configuration in projects which solve problem with jobs grouping. I didn't found option to group projects.
TeamCity is a free, Java-based CI server from JetBrains. We've been using it very successfully (for very different kinds of projects) and I would unreservedly recommend it to you. To each of your requirements:
Build pipelines are configured as a series of steps within a build configuration. A project can have an arbitrary number of configurations, which in turn can have an arbitrary number of steps.
LDAP integration is fully supported.
Build pipelines can be executed in parallel. TeamCity delegates work to Build Agents, which are typically distinct servers that have all the necessary tools (frameworks, etc.) to perform the steps of a build configuration. The free version of TeamCity comes with licenses for three agents, so you could have up to three builds running in parallel. Additional agents can be licensed for a nominal fee.
By 'hierarchical projects' I understand you to mean that the completion of one build pipeline will automatically trigger the start of a subsequent pipeline. This is supported, and build/version numbers can be passed between the stages for consistency.
XUnit has first-class support. Lint/compiler reports can be saved as 'artifacts' of the build for easy review later. Essentially, a lot of frameworks have built-in support in TeamCity, and for everything else you can execute arbitrary shell commands, the output of which can be saved as artifacts or used in subsequent build steps.
Slave/agent support is central to the TeamCity model, as noted above.
All of this is highly configurable and customizable. We've been able to do a lot of diverse, complex things with TeamCity, and it has been totally solid and stable for us. And it looks good, too -- the server dashboard arranges information in an easily-understood way.
Disclaimer: I work for Atlassian so I'm a bit biased.
Configuring your build pipeline in Bamboo is pretty easy to do. Bamboo operates based on a Plan → Stage → Job structure, listed from higher to lower order. Check out the Bamboo Plan Structure.
Every Project in Bamboo holds a collection of Plans. Plans are comprised of one or more Stages. Stages run sequentially and are comprised of one or more Jobs. Jobs run in parallel and are comprised of one or more Tasks (tasks run sequentially, but can be placed in separate Jobs so that they run in parallel and speed up build time). Agents in Bamboo are machines or services that perform your build steps. An entire Job will execute on a single Agent. You can read more about Agents here. As for slave tags, the ability to make certain agents exclusively tied to certain builds or projects is on the short-list for new features.
To answer your other points:
user authorization based on LDAP/privileges based on ldap groups/project: You can connect to an external LDAP server to manage users and permissions. Bamboo has a groups feature or if your team is using JIRA you can take advantage of JIRA groups to set up global permissions, plan permissions, and also indicate which users will receive notifications on a plan’s build results. Global permissions control who has access to build plans and the Bamboo server whereas Plan permissions control who can perform specific operations on a Plan and its Jobs.
hierarchical projects (projects/configurations groups): Bamboo does support parent & child plan structure. There are several ways you can set up triggering for builds. One of them is to base triggers on other builds, that is, Plan builds are triggered by preceding successful builds of other plans or if other specified plans are building successfully. Example: If Plan A builds successfully it will automatically trigger builds of Plans B & C.
reports from xUnit, Lint, Compiler warnings, Robot framework: Bamboo can run any build process that can be started from a command line. Support includes Maven/Maven2, Ant, make, MSBuild, NAnt, Grails, devenv.exe, and any xUnix-compiant framework (JUnit, Selenium, JWebUnit, NUnit, PHPUnit, etc...).
Is it possible to use the CruiseControl tool with a C++ (Mingw) project on Windows? I need to be able to download the latest sources from XVN, build them, send reports by mail. The application is using http server (lightpd) for work.
So main question is have to use it for email notifications?
Problem is I dont see any destination field in email tag.
I am interested in sending email notifications after build which executes in batch file.
E. g. in my config file I call batch file which executes build, after that I need to send email notification, how can I do it ?
Of course it is possible. There is a Java for Windows, a command line SVN clients, you can invoke gmake or any other build system you are using along with Cygwin, there is even a support for a Visual Studio projects if you need it. There are a lot of people using Cruise Control for C++ projects, thus a lot of documentation, tutorials and examples available online.
Perhaps not exactly what you're asking for, but is there anything preventing you from using Jenkins? People I've talked to that maintains the continuous integration for a living that have used both Jenkins as well as cruise control prefers Jenkins. Of course the bonus with Jenkins is that it's free.
If you can create a script that checks out and builds your project from the command line (in Cygwin's bash, for example), then you can certainly integrate the build into cruise control or Jenkins.
I don't know much about cruise control, but we use Jenkins a lot, and even though it has bugs that need to be worked around overall we find it extremely useful for CI and nightly build jobs.
Regarding the email aspect, Jenkins can be configured to watch the SVN log and when a build fails it can send an email to the people that committed changes since the last successful build. This functionality can be enabled with minimal configuration. There are add-ons that allow you to configure the content of the emails as well.
I wonder if there is any best practice or at least a more practical way to deploy C/C++ executable to Linux based production servers.
I have Jenkins up and running as CI server, and created a main SVN module which contains multiple svn:externals. This module is mainly served as a pipeline of related C++ applications. (Perhaps I should post this an another question on whether svn:externals is the correct way to do it)
So the main question is the deployment steps, I am planing to make all production servers as Jenkins' slaves with parameterized config, for the purpose of building from SVN tags. And use some scripts to copy all executables to, eg: /opt/mytools/bin in multiple production servers.
Any recommendations?
The best deployment route is the one specified by your distribution, IMHO. That is, for debian packages, bundle your applications into .deb-files, put them into a repository and let apt-get take care of the rest. This way, you have a minimal impact on the production environment and most admins are already familiar with the deployment scheme.
I'm working through some of the same questions, and I'm finding that Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation by Humble and Farley has been a good (technology agnostic) starting point - not perfect but it's pointed me in the right direction when I had no idea what to do next.
The continuous delivery book recommends setting up 'build pipelines' in which you run progressively more and more automated tests, with only the final manual tests and deploy rollback options being triggered by a real person.
At the moment, we are running our automated (not CI as such) builds via FinalBuilder via a very simple homegrown Apache interface that just launches the FB scripts on our server. (I like FinalBuilder, and will keep it, but it's CI server, FinalBuilder Server just doesn't cut it IMHO -- especially it doesn't support any "agent" concept at the moment to distribute builds across machines.)
We are doing native C++ development on Windows with a bit .NET mixed in where it's needed and makes sense.
Our current FinalBuilder scripts do everything quite well, from creating nightly builds to full releases (build / automated translation / build / unit test / create setup / put created artifacts on a network share / ...), but our webinterface, queuing abilities, user traceability and reporting is pretty limited.
I have looked around and it seems that TeamCity and Bamboo tick similar boxes, but most descriptions I can find cover only Java and/or .NET simple builds.
So my specific question is, given
several (20-30) complicated FinalBuilder Scripts that work to my satisfaction and that I will have to integrate into ("call" from) the new automation/"CI" server
Native Windows C++ and .NET projects
The actual build (= compiler invocation(s)) is done via a few Visual Studio solution files at the moment
Currently one build server machine, wishing to scale to 2-3 atm.
Using JIRA as issue tracker
using AccuRev as SCM
which tool is better suited, and why: TeamCity (currently 6.5) or Bamboo (currently 3.1).
(Note that I also hope to get some highly subjective answers on the TeamCity and Bamboo forums.)
For TeamCity side, it integrates with Jira, has AccuRev plugin, and has a good support for VisualStudio/C++ projects. It can also run arbitrary scripts.
You can trigger a build and obtain some build results via HTTP-based API. In the UI, you can see which changes have been built and in which build configurations. Easily integrate any custom HTML reports into TeamCity UI (no coding), publish artifacts.
Probably, you should try both solutions and see which one is more suitable for you (with Teamcity, you can use full-functional server for free, the only limit is number of build agents and number of build configurations).
Disclaimer: I'm a TeamCity developer
I found Bamboo more credible than TeamCity. Here are my reasons:
Those Jira plugins for VS or Eclipse are Bamboo plug-ins too. :) no extra add-ins needed.
Better support for Jira integration.
Nice user interface, like the one you used for Jira.
Ability to better integration with other Atlassian tools, such as FishEye.
Cheaper. A 10$ license will suffice your company.
More add-ons on Bamboo than TeamCity, lots of plug-ins.
For completeness' sake: I ended up using Jenkins + Finalbuilder. :-)
I worked in a similar environment using FinalBuilder for build automation, AccuRev for source control and a native windows projects.
I ended up selecting Electric Commander as the best CI solution for the job. It is possible to reuse parts of the FinalBuilder scripts and call them from Electric Commander but simply calling the FB script as one build step would result in you missing out on some of the key advantages of using Electric Commander - realtime log file processing, the ability to parallelize right down to individual step levels in Electric Commander and data collection and reporting.
Electric Commander has an API that exposes all product functionality which can be used in combination with AccuRev triggers to achieve a very flexible solution.
Disclaimer - I liked Electric Commander so much I joined the company and am currently employed by Electric Cloud.
You can try Electric Commander by going to www.electric-cloud.com and clicking on "Try It!"
I am thinking about writing my own release storage server and before I do this, I'd like to know what people use to see integration instead of create.
So what do you use to store your builds for internal access?
I'm looking for a web app that allows me to upload artifacts and then reference them by various tags so I can group them together by component or release vehicle. I also want access controls per build by readiness or promotion.
I define staging as placing built artifacts on a server for communities of users to access. The artifacts are usually zip files containing either applications or libraries + documentation. The user communities are developers, QA, and service delivery/operations. Basically, the creators, the checkers and external-users.
We release artifacts individually and as groups in a release vehicle (e.g., release 1.1 contains foo 1.0.1 and bar 1.0.7). Depending on the artifact, we may want to restrict access. Operations shouldn't be able to access pre-released builds and we may want to track who downloads a limited availability release.
So, I'm hoping to find a tool that does most of what I want with a good extensible design so I can add in what I don't have.
Any one know of a good tool for managing the builds post-build?
Examples might be:
quickbuild/lunt build
Team forge
build forge
Jira & confluence as a set
sonatype nexus
home grown
SVN repository using branching to promote builds from dev->Qa->GA
Peter,
Since you're not getting many answers, I'll let you know about AnthillPro whose developer, Urbancode, I work for.
Ok, disclaimers out of the way, AnthillPro is designed to serve exactly the broad audience that you're discussing - dev, checkers, and operations. Compared to the tools you list, AnthillPro is something like a BuildForge (a key competitor of ours) or quick build with a tightly integrated artifact repository (like nexus). So the builds are run, and you can view the results of your builds - and the build artifacts - in a nice web ui. Users with correct permissions can run a secondary process like a deployment or test against prior builds - and the artifacts from the selected build.
The goal is to manage the entire build lifecycle from creation, through various testing tools and deployment environments out through release to production. It's not a big nasty suite, instead we integrate with tools like Subversion and Jira to make sure every release has a manifest of source and problem ticket changes.
Your release packages would map well to AnthillPro's built in dependency system. We often see customers create virtual projects that take little or no source code, but instead either relate or package components into a release bundle.
Where AnthillPro may fall short for you is that generally, we would allow operations to see pre-release builds. However, you could add rules that would immediately fail / block an attempted releaes by operations of any build not marked as "pre-release". AnthillPro's system of statuses allows the team to flag a build with custom markers like, "In QA" or "Approved for Release". Combined with rules about running workflows,that should give you the control you need. If some projects are particularly sensitive, you'd just use the role based security to lock those away.
Hope that gives you something to look into.
-- Eric
My options are
build automation systems like AntHill, QuickBuild, TeamForge, BuildForge
file server
source control server
maven repository manager (nexus, archiva)
My goals are
group build by multiple criteria (artifact type, release vehicle, stage/phase)
promote build from dev -> qa -> released
provide access control for dev builds, qa ready builds, production ready builds
I'm going to focus on either source control as file server (using svn) or maven repos manager as file server using nexus. The rational is as follows:
minimize effort
minimize cost
use something I can easily extend when needed to (because I'm certain my requirements will shift).
maven use is growing and will eventually be the dominant build technology here.
Thanks for the information.