[Anthill] Building from Subversion - checkout vs. update

[Jim Hague]

On Wednesday 7 December 2005 16:54, Andy Levy wrote:
> I'm wondering if I'm trying to pound nails with a screwdriver here.
> I'm not moving towards a continuous integration/build environment; had
> no plans to, as I'm in up to my neck just getting version control set
> up and getting my head around Tomcat, Ant, and JSP apps in general and
> know very little about CI (maybe a trip to Barnes & Noble is in
> order).  Someone on the Subversion list had a suggestion for me on
> something that involved CuriuseControl.NET, so the theme has been
> recurring.

I was originally just after something that would do an automated daily build 
and give an at-a-glance status & email on failures. My priority, like you, 
was primarily to have a source for 'known reproducible and all neatly 
packaged' builds, and secondly an automatic source of 'you broke the build' 
nastygrams :-) Anthill's default is to look for updates every 30mins and I've 
not changed it, so I suppose I can be all high-falutin' and say I'm doing 
CI :-)

I looked at CruiseControl when I was setting up the system a couple of years 
ago. It basically does much what Anthill does. From memory, it's more 
configurable and probably has more mindshare, but it looked at the time to 
have fallen into the common Java trap of needing vast slabs of XML to 
configure it. I picked Anthill because it look much easier to setup. Things 
have undoubtedly changed since then.

> I'm really looking for a release management tool (if I 
> have to cobble one together with some scripts, so be it) where I can
> hand a release manager a request saying "please pull revision X from
> subversion repository Y and deploy the application on the server" with
> minimal knowledge of *how* it all works on his part.  Anthill, if I
> disable the schedule, gets me most of the way there I think.  But is
> it the right way for me to be doing this?

I think it's as good a way as any for an existing project. Anthill allows me 
to say 'go and download the tar file for version V build BBB and install 
that'. I do have to get the build.xml to produce the tar file, but Ant has 
plenty of goodies to help with that.

> I looked at Maven briefly as well, but the documentation was a little
> tough to follow.

Maven looks to me like another possibility for your needs. I'm not sure if it 
will do automatic period builds, but it will publish. However (and I've not 
used it) whenever I've looked at it I come away with the impression that it's 
prescriptive on how your project is organised. You have to do things the 
Maven Way.
-- 
Jim Hague - jim.hague at acm.org          Never trust a computer you can't lift.