Splitting the build - CruiseControl.NET

As your codebase grows and your build starts to take an increasingly long time, it often makes sense to think about splitting your build process into a set of dependent builds (<shamless-plug>check out my paper "Scaling Continuous Integration" from XP2004 for some tips on how to do this</shamless-plug>). Currently, the main way to go about triggering dependent builds is to set up a separate project containing the secondary build process that you want to run. It can be triggered by changes to a file or folder that is being monitored by a FileSystemSourceControl. Here's an example of what your ccnet.config file might look like:

<cruisecontrol>
	<project name="developerBuild">
		<sourcecontrol type="cvs">
			...
		</sourcecontrol>
		<build type="nant">
			<buildfile>main.build</buildfile>
			<targets>
				<target>compile</target>
				<target>unit.test</target>
				<target>publish.distribution</target>
			</targets>
		</build>
		<triggers><pollingInterval seconds="60" /></triggers>
		...
	</project>
	<project name="customerBuild">
		<sourcecontrol type="filesystem">
			<repositoryRoot>C:\project\distribution</repositoryRoot>
		</sourcecontrol>
		<build type="nant">
			<buildfile>integration.build</buildfile>
			<targets>
				<target>acceptance.test</target>
				<target>ncover</target>
			</targets>			
		</build>
		<triggers><pollingInterval seconds="300" /></triggers>
		...
	</project>
</cruisecontrol>

The targets are meant to be illustrative of the types of things that you might want to put into the different builds.

As of CCNet 0.7.1, there is a new publisher called ForceBuildPublisher that can be used to force build for a project on a local or remote ccnet server. The ForceBuildPublisher can be set to force a dependent build depending on the status of the integration: whether it succeeded, failed or generated an exception. Here's what the above ccnet.config file would look like if you used this publisher:

<cruisecontrol>
	<project name="developerBuild">
		<sourcecontrol type="cvs">
			...
		</sourcecontrol>
		<build type="nant">
			<buildfile>main.build</buildfile>
			<targets>
				<target>compile</target>
				<target>unit.test</target>
				<target>publish.distribution</target>
			</targets>
		</build>
		<triggers><pollingInterval seconds="60" /></triggers>
		<publishers>
			<forcebuild>
				<project>customerBuild</project>
			</forcebuild>
			<serverUri>
				tcp://localhost:21234/CruiseManager.rem
			</serverUri>
		</publishers>
		...
	</project>
	<project name="customerBuild">
		<sourcecontrol type="test" />		<!-- unfortunately necessary as sourcecontrol is a required element -->
		<build type="nant">
			<buildfile>integration.build</buildfile>
			<targets>
				<target>acceptance.test</target>
				<target>ncover</target>
			</targets>			
		</build>
		...					<!-- no trigger is required as the build will always be forced -->
	</project>
</cruisecontrol>

Note: that you can easily change the serverUri property to refer to a ccnet server running on a remote machine if you want to distribute your build process.

See also Enterprise Continuous Integration with Binary Dependencies example for some other examples demonstrating how to do this.