I am currently researching a good setup for a continuous integration server which would build various C++ applications for several Linux distributions.
My primary question is how other users here have handled the differences in system libraries between Linux distributions?
While it might be relatively easy to build direct dependencies such as UI libraries along with an application, "indirect" dependencies such as glibc look like a big pain if they had to be built alongside the application every time. I am therefore thinking of moving the actual build execution into a separate virtual machine for each distribution, e.g. using rlogin to run the commands. My goal is to prevent binary incompatibilities between build-machine library versions and those deployed in the target distributions.
Does anyone here have any experience with such a process and could tell if the above sounds like a feasible approach?
We use Jenkins (Contiguous Integration) and CMake (build system) for this purpose. Jenkins is similar to Buildbot, i.e. it also has buildmaster and buildslaves. Currently I have setup 8 slaves to build for 4 different platforms (FC8, FC10, FC12 and Windows 7). We build both debug and release binaries, so I dedicated one slave for each platform and build type.
As for the third party libraries like Qt & Boost, I compiled them on each platform and checked them into a separate repository.
#esavard: We use CMake 2.8 to do cross compilation, I have not used minigw but a quick google search indicates that it is possible. Here is a link to a tutorial to cross compile for Windows on Linux using CMake and miniGW.
I have not used Buildbot and cannot comment on its features but thought I should mention an alternative that we are currently using.
Hope this helps.
Buildbot has the notion of buildmasters and buildslaves.
A buildmaster takes care of displaying the web GUI, sending email, triggering builds, and other housekeeping. The buildslaves wait on the buildmaster and when commanded perform builds.
We have buildbot set up to build on a number of different platforms, some of them VMs, and it's working well for us.
Certainly buildbot and many virtual machines is the way to go with this. We have VMWare ESX server hosting many build slaves which overnight compile our application. The application is then tested on another virtual machine (not the build slave and just having a default OS install) to verify that it works and all dependency's are packaged.
The nice thing I would like to do is make the testing run time phase an automated step but I haven't been given the time to do that yet.
Related
I have got a make file project which uses several tools such as cppcheck or asn1c. There are several developers which use this project on their local custom linux machines. The problem is, that every linux machine has a different version of the needed tools. So for example one developer has cppcheck 1.8 and another on has installed 1.6. Now I run into trouble because the different versions of the tools have different behavior. For example some developer run successfully through cppcheck and some do not.
So I ask how to handle different versions of dependencies?
I have got some Ideas:
Adding the source code of the tools to the project and compile the tools before running the build process itself.
Compiling the tools statically and add the binary to the project. Thus every developer would use the exact same binary.
Give a virtual machine or a remote access to every developer. Thus every one uses the same environment
Instruct all developers which Linux distribution to use and to keep their system up to date.
Set up a dedicated server(s) to handle the builds after they are committed to your versioning system.
This way you can make sure they all use the same versions, you can setup multiple buildservers with different sets of libraries to check against different versions of dependencies or OS-es.
This is a pretty common setup for software development.
See this SO post for the rationale behind it: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1099146/2186184
Up front: I am not a system adminstrator and my knowledge of FreeBSD-administration is targeted towards getting the programs I have written running.
I've started out with a single FreeBSD machine. Now I've got four up and running. From the start I've used the ports tree for installations.
I'd love to run something like a centralized build and distribution system. There must be some professional term for such a thing, but I seriously don't know. If I would, I would propably be able to find the right infomation.
And that's the question: how (i.e. which tools and/or processes does it take) can I build and distribute FreeBSD binaries from a centralized system?
You should use something like poudriere or tinderbox to manage your build environments. You should be doing parallel builds; distcc allows you to do simple distributed builds and ccache provides a speed-up by caching results.
Once you get the builds working, you just need to export the generated packages.
Here's a how-to for poudriere: https://github.com/freebsd/poudriere/wiki/pkg_repos
I'm looking to implement a build server for Qt-based C++ projects. The server needs to check out the necessary code / assets from Subversion, build the executable files, assemble the artifacts for installation projects, and build the installation media files. The target platforms and (rough) toolchains are:
Windows (32- and 64-bit): qmake, nmake, msbuild, wix toolchain. The end result is an installer EXE and DVD image.
Mac OS X: qmake, make, custom bash scripts to assemble package. The end result is an application bundle within a disk image and a DVD image.
Ubuntu (32- and 64-bit): qmake, make, debuild-based scripts. The end result is a collection of DEB files and a DVD image.
Fedora (32- and 64-bit): qmake, make, rpmbuild-based scripts. The end result is a collection of RPM files and a DVD image.
So that's at least 4 build agents (maybe more if 32- and 64-bit can't be done on the same box) and 7 configurations. Open-source projects are preferred, but that is not an absolute requirement.
Most of the tools I'm seeing seem to be catered to Java (Jenkins, CruiseControl, etc.) or .Net (CruiseControl.net, etc.) Can those be used with a C++ toolchain, or will I constantly be fighting the system? Anything that you have used in the past and found works well with Qt / C++?
I use Jenkins for building and packaging many C++ projects, based on qmake, cmake, and makefiles.
There are plugins for cmake, qmake, and msbuild, but any command line scripts can be run as well.
I have done packaging using Jenkins with no problems, as it is just another command line step in a project.
There are good plugins for monitoring the number of warnings/errors produced by the compiler (I normally use GCC).
It also has matrix builds which allow you to build a project several times with different combinations of compiler flags, pre-processor variables, platform, etc. One project I set up is a matrix build with 5 boolean preprocessor flags on two platforms, which then does 2^6=64 builds. These can take a bit of setting up to get correct.
Here you can read a quick example:
Continuous Integration Server - Hudson
I think that Hudson, jenkins and builbot are worth a try. Wasting a day or two evaluating and trying them with a quick example will help you to choose confidently.
Most of the tools I'm seeing seem to be catered to Java (Jenkins, CruiseControl, etc.) or .Net (CruiseControl.net, etc.) Can those be used with a C++ toolchain, or will I constantly be fighting the system? Anything that you have used in the past and found works well with Qt / C++?
Any reasonably capable CI system will have a piece that will allow you to execute any program you want for your build command.
Here's what I would consider:
Does the CI system run on your system(s) of choice
Does it allow you an easy way to view your logs
Does it integrate with your test runner
Does it integrate with your code coverage reports (e.g. BullseyeCoverage w/C++ & Qt)
Will it publish your files in a manner sensible for your needs
Will at provide an archive/store of files, if necessary (e.g. pdbs & lib*.so.debug)
If the CI system doesn't support feature X, will you have to write it for each supported OS/system
Is the CI system / UI easy for you to use.
I did the above using CruiseControl and most things were pretty easy. I wrote everything in make or qmake and simply called out to the command that I needed executed. For unit test and code coverage integration I output stuff to XML and transformed it to something supported by CruiseControl.
My recommendation, take a look at the recommended CI systems and examine them based on the criteria above.
I'm using buildbot for this. I've been using it for 4 years, and I feel very happy with it.
It is an application written in python, that runs on a server and can manage multiple clients on various OSes. I'm currently using Windows XP, Windows 7, Debian, Ubuntu and CentOS build slaves. My projects are C++, and one of them (the end user GUI) is made in Python. But we've also integrated with other frameworks, for other features than GUI.
What is really good about buildbot is that it works by running command lines on slaves. With this, you can do whatever you want. Even on Windows systems to compile using Visual Studio! From these command lines, you get all the output centralized on the server, and accessible.
You may also find alternatives on this site that references many of them.
Disclaimer: I looked at it 3 years ago, I don't know if it is still accurate.
Hudson or Jenkins is pretty good.
Jenkins is indeed pretty popular for developing such a custom service, even after all these years, considering the question is already 7 years old.
Felgo also offers a Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI/CD) service for Qt. It supports desktop platforms as well as iOS, Android and embedded targets. The full feature set is described in the blog post.
Disclaimer: I am a software developer at Felgo
I am working on my free time on a multiplatform/multi-architecture library written in C++.
Before every release, I have to boot up several computers (One on Windows, one on Linux, another one on Mac OS, ...) just to make sure the code compiles and runs fine on every platform.
So I decided to create my own buildmachine but I really don't know what tools exist to do this. I'd like my buildmachine to run on Linux but any other solution will be accepted.
Ideally, I would just have to click on a "Build all" button, and it would compile my library for the different platforms/architectures, generate archives from the result and/or report potential errors.
My project "constraints" are:
It is written in C++
It compiles on Windows using SConstruct/MinGW and Visual Studio 2010
It compile on Linux and Mac OS using SConstruct/g++
The sources are stored into Subversion (svn)
Do you know any tool/set of tools that could help me achieving my goal ?
Thank you very much.
I would setup 3 VMs (VirtualBox is free), one for each platform.
Install TeamCity (or Hudson) on Linux and agents on the other VMs and then it's just a matter of configuring the build system.
At the very basic level you should have 2 tasks: one to checkout the sources from Subversion and another to invoke scons.
I'm not too familiar with Hudson but TeamCity is certainly capable of generating reports of a build, display progress etc.
I have an Open Source app and I have it working on Windows, Linux and Macintosh ( it's in C++ and built with gcc ). I've only tested it on a few different flavors of Linux so I don't know if it compiles and runs on all different Linux versions. Is there a place where I can upload my code and have it tested across a bunch of different systems like other Linux flavors and things like, Solaris, FreeBSD and other operating systems?
What would be great is if I can have it directly connect to my svn repository and grab the latest code and then email me back any compile errors generated and what the OS was that it had a problem with.
I would be happy to just know it compiles as it is a GUI based app so I wouldn't expect it to actually be ran and tested.
There are a few options but there don't appear to be many (any?) free services like this, which isn't surprising considering the amount of effort and resources it requires. Sourceforge used to operate a compile farm like what you describe but it shut down a year or so ago. You might look into some of the following. If you're inclined to pay for a service or roll your own, then some of these links may be useful. If you're just looking for a free open source compile/build farm that covers multiple platforms it looks like you're pretty much out of luck.
OpenSuse Build Service
Mentioned by Ted first, worth repeating - only for Linux currently but does support a number of distros.
GCC Compile Farm
Mainly focused on testing builds for GCC but does also host a few other projects such as coLinux, BTG BitTorrent client, ClamAV, and others. May be something you can take advantage of, though I don't see what OSes are in the compile farm (contains at least Linux and Solaris based on the page notes).
BuildLocker
BuildLocker is a Web-based continuous integration solution for Java and .NET projects. BuildLocker is a virtual dedicated build machine that helps teams find bugs earlier in the development cycle, saving time and money. BuildLocker manages scheduled automated builds of source code in your ProjectLocker Source Control repository. Just check in the source code, and scheduled builds validate the integrity of the code. BuildLocker can even run automated tests, and can alert you anytime a test fails.
CruiseControl
CruiseControl is a framework for a continuous build process. It includes, but is not limited to, plugins for email notification, Ant, and various source control tools. A web interface is provided to view the details of the current and previous builds.
Interesting side note, CruiseControl is actually used by StackOverflow's dev team for automated build testing as well, according to the podcast.
Hudson
Hudson monitors executions of repeated jobs, such as building a software project or jobs run by cron.
RunCodeRun
Mentioned in the other linked question, only supports Ruby projects and is in private beta currently. However, if your project is in Ruby, it might be worth keeping an eye on RunCodeRun.
CI Feature Matrix
There are many Continuous Integration systems available. This page is an attempt to keep an unbiased comparison of as many as possible of them.
Take a look at the OpenSuSE build service, it includes a fairly wide variety of Linux distros (not just SuSE/OpenSuSE).
From a software point of view, there's also buildbot (sourceforge project site), which can be used to set up your own build/continous integration server.
This was suggested and considered to be used for gcc development (as mentioned on the gcc compile farm wiki page posted above).
If you are planning to go commercial with your open source product you might consider our Parabuild. It allows you to run a set of builds on multiple platforms and machines in parallel. The build will success only if all platform-specific builds success.