[kepler-dev] nightly build system

[Chad Berkley]

Hi,

I think I've finally found a nightly build system that I like.  AntHill 
does most, if not all, of what we talked about at the meeting(s).  You 
can check it out at http://trestles.nceas.ucsb.edu:8080/anthill/
The anthill homepage is at 
http://www.urbancode.com/projects/anthill/default.jsp
They have two versions, an enterprise edition that costs like $1200 and 
a free OS version (which I installed).  The OS version has a very good 
PDF user manual that you can download from their site.

I currently have two projects defined: kepler and kepler-test.  kepler 
just runs 'ant jar' and produces a result based on the compilation and 
jarring of the head of CVS.  kepler-test run 'ant test' and is 
determines success based on whether any junit tests fail.  kepler-test 
is dependent on kepler because if the compilation fails, there isn't 
much point in running the junit tests.  (Some may argue this with me, 
but for our current rules governing checking in working (read: 
compilable) code, I think it's right.)

The only problem I have with the AntHill system is that the web 
interface is insecure.  Anyone can go to it and mess with the builds. 
It was designed to be on an intranet so I don't think they really took 
security seriously.  I think we can probably modify this (at least put 
it behind a password protected directory or something) if we decide this 
system works for what we want.

So please check it out and let me know what you think.  I currently have 
it set to run the builds at 23:00 PDT everynight.  If you want to add 
yourself to the email part of it, click 'edit' next to kepler or 
kepler-tests then go down to the anthill.users param and add your name 
and email.  Currently I'm the only one getting email.  I think if we 
decide to use this, we would probably add a list address here, but if 
you just want to try it out, add your email manually.  Also, this is 
just installed on trestles for testing.  It would be installed on 
ecoinformatics.org if we decide to use it.

let me know if you have any problems/questions.

chad