Windows Developer Power Tools

12.7 Easing the Burden of Implementing a Continuous Integration Process with CI Factory

Continuously integrating a product’s code base is a practice that can dramatically increase its stability. Martin Fowler’s seminal article (http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html) has convinced many people of the benefits of continuous integration, but turning the words into actions can be difficult. You have to cobble together a build server and write the build scripts, and you’ll have to repeat this process for every project with which you want to practice continuous integration.

For an experienced CI master, it may take a couple of days to get a project under CI; for an inexperienced person, it may take a week or more. This delay can cause some people to decide it’s not worth the effort.

CI Factory was created to mitigate these time requirements, and was born out of a desire to quit writing unique build scripts for every new project. For more on this, see the following:

• “A Recipe for Build Maintainability and Reusability,” by Jay Flowers (see http://www.jayflowers.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26)

• “How to setup a .NET Development Tree Wrapup,” by Mike Roberts (available at http://www.mikebroberts.com/blog/archive/Tech/ArticlesandPapers/Howtosetupa.NETDevelopmentTreeWrapup.html)

The goal of the CI Factory project was to provide a standard workspace that could be built with little or no customization. CI Factory uses the industry-standard tools CruiseControl.NET ...