Continuous Integration with Hudson and .NET

Continuous integration - the practice of frequently integrating one's new or changed code with the existing code repository - should occur frequently enough so that no intervening window remains between commit and build, and such that no errors can arise without developers noticing them and correcting them immediately. Normal practice is to trigger these builds by every commit to a repository, rather than a nightly (or weekly!) scheduled build. Automated tools such as CruiseControl or Hudson support this process.

We decided to use Hudson for one of our projects since we allready had a Hudson server up and running for Java projects. Hudson includes numerous plugins for a variety of source controls, build technologies, and notifications schemes including email and instant messaging. A web interface provides details of the current and previous builds. With help from Redsolo's Guide to building .NET projects using Hudson we got it up and running within a day.

Our setup is as following:

• Get the source code from our Subversion repository.
• Link change logs to the repository browser using ViewVC.
• Build the project using MBuild.
• Run the tests using NUnit and display the results together with a trend graph.
• Publish artifacts from the build (triggered builds).
• Run FxCop on the created assemblies and display warnings (linked with source code) and a trend graph.
• Search the source code for TODO comments and display the open tasks with links to the source code.
• Create documentation using Doxygen.
• Deploy the whole build on a dedicated test server.
• Notify project members about the build result by email.

So far we are really impressed by Hudson, but I will tell you more about our experiences when we have used it for a little longer.