I am about to start a new personal project. It aims to be a pretty big one so I thought it would be a good idea to keep some sort of CVS. I have also read lot of interesting stuff about unit testing and I would like to include some system that automatically builds the project and runs a series of test after each check in.
The characteristics are:
Only one developer and one machine (just me and my computer!).
Include a CVS.
Include automated testing.
The software should be free (as in no-cost) and run under Linux.
It is going to be C++ and ANTLR based.
So far, I have set up SVN and Eclipse+CDT+ANTLR for development but I am pretty lost about the automated build+test setting. To write the tests I have been thinking in Boost.Test or UnitTest++.
So that's the source of my question. How should I set up my local test/build machine?
Links to valuable tutorials are more than welcome.
Thanks.
It seems that most open source continuous integration servers are built on java and does not support C++ "out-of-the-box". However there are some links you can start with (note that for running most open source continuous integration servers you need a java environment):
What continuous integration tool is best for a C++ project - some alternatives for continuous integration software
Continuous integration for C++ - some ideas for Hudson configuration
Using CruiseControl with C++ - some ideas and configurations for CruiseControl
Compiling C/C++ code with Ant - if you do use the "Makefile project" in CDT and do not want to use make as a build tool
I personally prefer Hudson because of its simply install (no need for application server just start with java -jar hudson.war) and easy to use and quite "clever" gui. Hudson can checkout your code from SVN (or CVS) and can run a shell script or Ant file as a build script. Maybe you have to spend a few days to set up a configuration with a proper build script but I think it worth the time.
The sort of automatic process you are looking at is called continuous integration. There is software to help you with this - a good example is JetBrains TeamCity. You will also hear of people using CruiseControl, Atlassian Bamboo and so on for this.
To take full advantage of this, you may also want to look at an automated build tool like Ant or Mavenl; your continuous integration build will then use this as its build runner.
A good starting point would be the Martin Fowler page on CI or the Wikipedia one.
Related
I have to create and configure an eclipse (Mars 2) for a C project. The project is on a SVN repository, and can only be compiled on a specific linux redhat server that has the appropriate toolchain.
What I need is an IDE that would allow me to commit my changes to the repository and that would automagically synchronize them on the Linux server. I tried a few things but none of them worked. I must (to my great regret) avoid the need of a terminal while using that IDE, but of course not while configuring it.
Firstly, I used the Remote System Explorer feature in eclipse. I connected succefully to the server, created a "Remote Project" that I could open in the C/C++ perspective. However, the whole thing is impossible to use, as it has no indexation, I had to create "User Actions" in order to compile (which is on my point of vue pretty anti-ergonomic) and the SVN plugin does not detect the project as an SVN copy. Furthermore, in the C/C++ perspective, there is a 2s gap between the moment I type something, and the moment it appears on my screen.
I also tryed to mount a network filesystem on my local machine, with sshfs, and if it works far better, I still experience lags. Also, I had to write a Makefile and call my compiler via "ssh $(USER)#$(HOST) build.ksh". (one of the point of the projetc is to write a real Makefile...). But SVN is working.
I also tried to run eclipse on the host machine, with X forwarding, and if it works perfectly, there is still lags...
Finally, I tried an sftp synchronisation, but it seems I can't use my SVN plugin features and the sftp together.
I am out of solutions, and pretty frustrated as I feel that this kind of things should be pretty easy. I mean, all I want is that eclipse automatically copy my files on my remote home directory... Thanks for your help...
To me this sounds like a perfect use-case for a continuus integration (CI) system. Generally speaking, this CI system pulls the code from your repository (for example in regular intervals) and then executes the build chain, collects artifacts, informs you about the state of your build, etc.
Although it originated from the Java world, I have successfully used Jenkins for continuus integration of C-projects on a Linux server, but there are others, like TeamCity or GitLab CI (the latter would require you to switch to Git, but it's a really neat system with a YAML configuration for CI).
Of course CI systems have a learning curve - you don't something like a free meal - but it may really be worth the effort.
"local continuous integration system" may not be the correct term, but what I'm hoping to find is an continuous integration system that can be configured to monitor changes to local files (C++ files in particular) and 1) try to compile the affected object files (stopping on first failure), and if successful and no new source file changes 2) link the affected binaries, and if successful and no new source file changes 3) run affected tests.
By monitor changes to local files, I do not mean monitor commits to a revision control system, but the state of local files as they are saved. Ideally the system would be provide integrations into source editors so it could monitor changes in the editor that haven't even been saved to disk yet.
Ideally it would also provide a graphical indication (preferably on Windows 7) of current and recent status that quickly allows drilling into failures when desired.
The closest thing I found was nose as described here but that only covers running Python tests not building C++ files.
The closest thing to what you are looking for is cdash and the Boost test bench; I think that a tool like the one you are looking for will never exist for C++ because compiling each project after editing a single file it's only a waste of time in a productive C++ workflow.
Continues Integration is a rising concept today, so you are not alone here.
Assuming you are developing on Windows, if you are working with Microsoft Visual Studio
you may consider Microsoft's Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS)
(formerly Visual Studio Team System).
That will give you Source-Control AND Build-Automation in one package,
with great integration to Microsoft products, of course
(I think there is a free version for MSDN users).
If not keen on Microsoft products, or just looking for build-automation,
I would recommend a great Open-Source Continues Integration tool:
Jenkins CI.
Good luck!
I would look at Jenkins CI - it is a good tool, works on any platform, and can be configured to do almost anything. I used it to run Python Code that talked to a mobile phone, made calls and recorded those calls (and tested the "quality" of the call, although my project never got the £xxxx real quality software, as we were just showing a concept), and then Jenkins would produce graphs of "how well it worked".
You can also do what you describe of "chaining" - so it would discover that your source has changed, try to build it [generally this is done using make, so it would automatically stop at the first errored file (although it could be hundreds of errors in one file!)]. Compile and build success then chains to running tests. Not entirely sure how you determine what is "relevant". If your test cycle isn't enormous, I'd run them all!
I wonder if someone has idea about next.
I'm developing for BlackBerry. IDEA doesn't recognize RIM installation as JSDK or Mobile SDK. So I have create project without SDK and attach RIM jar file as dependency.
I'm trying to write as much as possible unit test with JUnit and Mockito but to run them IDEA requires JSDK. So I created additional module where I set JSDK, correct language level and it works. It's already hassle to create additional module (better if we could set JSDK and other compiler, runtime options for code and tests) but I was quite happy.
I have also dependencies for some common libraries which we use in android and J2ME also. I added them as modules with JSDK 1.6 and language level 1.3. And I able to develop and run test on it also.
But I got issue with LEDA EAP. IDEA now complaints about incompatibility with java.lang because it found them both in RIM jar and JSDK for libraries. And now I'm thinking about next hassle to fix my favorite ide. Sure it's EAP and things could be changed.
But anyone has any recommendation or similar situation setup?
I'm doing research on doing builds using TFS2010 Team Build. At the moment we are using Nant Scripting to build .NET code as well as launching external processes to build VB6 projects. We are slowly converting our VB6 over to .NET but would like to gain the benefits of automating as much as possible. How can we launch an external process to compile in Team Build to compile our VB6 projects? Is this possible? Any suggestions, etc would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jim
Have a look at the InvokeProcess activity, it should be able to do what you want. For relatively simple tasks like compilation etc. it should be enough. If you need to capture output in a more detailed way (e.g. publish test results from external tests), you may need to write your own custom activity.
you can use the VB6 activity from Community TFS Build Extensions
We're using JIRA with Bamboo as build server for continuous integration.
But I have a native C++ project (using Visual Studio 2010), and apparently Microsoft doesn't support unit tests for native C++ code. There's some tools like WinUnit or cfix that seem to do the job, but neither do I know about their compatibility to Bamboo, nor do I know which tool is the best / easiest to use / has the most features / has best VS compatibility ...
Does someone have experience with that?
Just as a heads up, my current project is using c++ with bamboo for CI. We use googletest for our testing framework. If you have the build run with --gtest_output=xml:{file or Directory} it will produce xml output that can parsed by Bamboo's JUnit Parse task.
I played a bit with CppUnit. The way it works is that you create an executable project which you fill with your test cases. When run, it runs your tests. I think cfix does that but I've never used it for user mode testing. To run the tests as part of your build process, put in a post build step for your test project that runs the test exe. It'll run when you build your Visual Studio solution.