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CI Factory Beta 0.9.0.90 This is the third release of the 0.9 series, build 90. You can read the release notes here [Link removed: content not recovered during site restoration] and download from here. There is a new source control Package: Perforce! There are more improvements to the dashboard, for examples see the screen shots below. Also the ground work for automated branching has been laid. The changes to enable this are small and important. The ccnet project names now include the branch name, so by default a new CI Factory project named CoolBeans would have a ccnet project name of CoolBeans-Current. The virtual directory structure in IIS has change as well. The root dir name format is and the Artifacts dir has moved under the root dir. These two simple changes will enable automated branching, so look for a create branch script in the next week or so. ...

Stop Spreading Crap About ALT.Net! I am so very tired of reading blog posts of rumors and nonsense about ALT.Net and the conference. If you were not there you should not be commenting on it. Shut the !@#$ up! I am not going to single anyone out with a quote, not for lack of opportunity. You %&*# talkers should be ashamed of yourselves. Your attitude sucks**!** I have not read a single freaking ALT.Net proponents’ blog or heard one in person that says how anyone should be excluded. To the contrary, they are contemplating and taking action on including, attracting, enticing, etc. There is no divisiveness! Microsoft was there! They were welcomed! They were engaged. All of us as a group, WE, as in the Microsoft guys are part of the we, discussed how Microsoft’s resources could be used to support ALT.Net. The Microsoft guys were there to embrace ALT.Net, their actions illustrate that. Not everyone there was a ALT.Net fan boy. Not everyone there was an expert at . ...

CI Factory Beta 0.9.0.52 This is the second release of the 0.9 series, build 52. You can read the release notes here [Link removed: content not recovered during site restoration] and download from here. This release includes and update for NCover 2.0.1! Note the NCover package only supports 2.0.1. There are two new force filters: Host and Password. The host force filter will let you specify host names of clients that can force a build. The password filter lets you specify a password that must be supplied to force a build. The CI Factory live build server uses a password filter, see here. Thanks to Nicolás Maldonado for a patch to use the program files env var instead of hard coding “C:\Program Files”. ...

Force Filters I added two new force filters to CI Factory in the last release, 0.9.0.52. The host filter will check the host name of the machine that the force request is coming from against a list of allowed hosts. I did not find a good way to get the host name for a machine over the Internet so you might want to reserve the use of that filter to private network build servers. I hope to find a suitable solution in the near future. Here is a config example: ...

Polish Your Build I think one of the reasons that I have had great success with CI Factory when introducing teams to CI is polish, or ease of use. Some of that polish comes with CI Factory out of the box, this post is about that extra that I have found myself adding of late. I like to provide a script that will get developers all setup from the get go. Recently I have found the best place to locate this script to be on the CCNet dashboard. ...

Public Build Server for CI Factory Stelligent is now hosting the build server for CI Factory. That is correct the build server is now publicly available. [](http://cifactorybuild.stelligent.com/ci factory) <http://cifactorybuild.stelligent.com/ci factory> Not having a public build server has prevented the growth of a developer community on CI Factory. I didn’t think it fare to invite people to become committers while the build server was private. I see establishing a core development team on CI Factory as one of the most vital issues. Hopefully this will open the way for others to join the team.

CI Factory Beta 0.9.0.14 This is the first release of the 0.9 series, build 14. You can read the release notes here [Link removed: content not recovered during site restoration] and download from here. There is already a significant amount of change in this early release. First off there is a NUnit Package now! I am sure that a lot of people are saying about time. There have been several performance improvements to CCNet, in particular the web dashboard. One of the improvements that will make my life a lot easier in the NAnt scripting department is with xmlpeek. I have improved the eval capabilities of the xpath expressions. It should now work for any xpath expression, so things like sum(@testsrun) will work. Lastly there have been some new CCNet NAnt functions added, allowing you to do things like write NAnt scripts to help testers get a test env setup for a build of their choosing. Hopefully I will blog about these changes and more in the coming weeks. Here are all the changes: ...

Loop Diagrams Jeffery Fredrick asked for some verbage around the loop diagrams that are in the slides from this post. The first slide with a loop diagram was about simply adding value: This is generally the situation in which a project is in before adding Continuous Integration. Please know that the Ss and Os in the diagram stand for same and opposite (thanks again Jeff), meaning the two nodes connected by the line vary the same or in opposition. So this diagram says that: As desired value increases so does the gap in value. As the gap in value increase so does the actions to add value. When there is a delay in the system or when the perception is inadequate, increases in action to add value worsen the delay and or perception, which in turn increase the gap in value. Alternatively when the system does not have a delay or issue with fidelity of perception, actual value increases as actions to add value increase, which decrease the gap in value. ...

Introducing Shell Glue Shell Glue is a Windows Explorer Shell Extension, more specifically to add context menu items to files and folders. What menu items and sub items are added to the context menu is controlled through a configuration file. For a simple example lets create a configuration that will give a menu item that will build solution and or project files with MSBuild when selected. <?xml version=“1.0“ encoding=“utf-8“ ?> <Settings> <Actions> <ActionItem> <Name>Build</Name> <Verb>Build</Verb> <Help>Build</Help> <TargetListMode>File</TargetListMode> <IconFilePath>C:Program FilesShell Glue.Netmsbuild.ico</IconFilePath> <ExtentionFilter> <string>^.*.sln$</string> <string>^.*..*proj$</string> </ExtentionFilter> <ProgramPath>C:Program FilesShell Glue.NetBuild.bat</ProgramPath> </ActionItem> </Actions> </Settings> Here is the batch file contents: ...

Li and Process in Software Development From Wikipedia: Li (禮 pinyin: Lǐ) is a classical Chinese ideograph which finds its most extensive use in Confucian and post-Confucian Chinese philosophy. Just like other ideographs of the Chinese lexicon, li encompasses not a definitive object but rather a somewhat abstract idea; as such, it is translated in a number of different ways. Most often, li is described using some form of the word ‘ritual’ (as in Burton Watson’s ‘rites’,[1] and Henry Rosemont and Roger Ames’ ‘ritual propriety’),[2] but it has also been translated as ‘customs’, ‘etiquette’, ‘morals’, and ‘rules of proper behavior’, among other terms. ...