[Anthill] Building from Subversion - checkout vs. update

[Andy Levy]

Finally getting back to this...

On 12/7/05, Jim Hague <jim.hague at acm.org> wrote:
> 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 :-)

Our development is very slow-paced right now.  We're rolling out fewer
than a half-dozen changes to our web application each month, sometimes
fewer, depending upon the scope of those changes.  And only one
"serious" developer working on it.

In a future project, CI may be the way to go, but for now, it's total overkill.

> 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.

Yeah, there was a ton of XML configuration I'd need to do with CC, and
it seems to run its own server.  I'm finding that a lot - so many OSS
projects that run on a server are built to run as their own service,
as opposed to operating under another- Anthill being an exception to
this.  I don't want to have to run a dozen services just to manage my
code/build environment!

> > 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.

I had that same impression.  You pretty much have to structure your
development and project in a way that agrees with Maven.  As with CI
in general, I may be able to use it in a future project, but for this
one which is already well-established, it may be more trouble than
it's worth to restructure just for this.