RuWi

Setting up CCNet in combination with VS2010

2011-09-26T07:47:00.012+02:00

In this post I'll describe how one can set up CCNet to work with VS2010. Not everyone has the full blown version of TFS at their disposal.

Scenario setup

I always use the following setup at work :

Project_CI : for Continuous Integration (compile, unit-test)
Project_MakePackage : this makes the install package (compile, unit-test,integration-test, make package)
Project_QA : this does unit-test, integration_test, coverage and code analysis.

This is a pragmatic approach: a 'fix' can be deployed even when for example coverage is still below X percent, as long as all tests are passed. It's convention that QA must be fixed ASAP!

The CI must be as fast as possible, so it runs only the unit-tests. The CI project has an interval trigger checking the repo every 5 minutes. This project does NOT label TFS.

The makePackage project has a schedule trigger : every day at 20:00, and a labeler so we can easily branch via a label.

The QA project also has a schedule trigger : every day at 21:00. This project does NOT label TFS.

Step 1 : Setting up the source control part

In Tfs itself I have the following layout :


ProjectName
  \__Main
  |    \Lib
  |    \Src
  \__Releases
       \__1_0_0_3450
       |  \Lib
       |  \Src
       \__1_0_1_5678
          \Lib
          \Src

This allows for easy branching.

Step 2 : Setting up CCNet.config

I use the pre-processor to reduce a lot of the configuration. This allows me to define a CCNet project in just 30 lines!
You can read the full configuration for the tfs source control at the wiki Tfs Source Control
My advise : set the deleteworkspace and cleancopy to true, this prevents a lot of problems.
A full example of ccnet.config with comparable layout is at the bottom of this post.

The preprocessor declaration :
<cb:define name="vsts_ci">
 <server>http://tfs-server:8080/tfs/default/</server>
 <username>cruise</username>
 <password>**********</password>
 <domain>tfs-server</domain>
 <autoGetSource>true</autoGetSource>
 <cleanCopy>true</cleanCopy>
 <force>true</force>
 <deleteWorkspace>true</deleteWorkspace>
</cb:define>

The source control block inside a project :
  <sourcecontrol type="vsts">
   <workspace>$(ProjectName)</workspace>
   <project>$/$(ProjectName)/Main</project>
   <cb:vsts_ci/>    
  </sourcecontrol>

Step 3 : Setting up the build script

The main action lays of course in the build script, for which I use Nant. The reason I (still) use Nant is that I know it rather well, and it works. For compiling I just call the MSBuild task from NantContrib pointing to the VS2010 solution, but all other logic is in Nant.
An example of the Nant build script is also at the bottom of this post.

Step 4 : Testing with Ms-test

Like I said in the beginning, I have 2 kind of tests, UnitTests and Integration Tests. In MS-test I create a test-list with the name UnitTests directly under the root item. All tests in this list, and in test-lists beneath it will be ran when I specify UnitTests. The 'Integration Tests' (slow running ones, going to the database, ...) are in a test-list named IntegrationTests also directly under the root item. Here's an example of calling MS-Test via nant :

<exec program="${mstest_exe}">
  <arg value="/testmetadata:${mstest_metadatafile}" />
  <arg value="/resultsfile:MStest_Results.xml" />
  <arg value="/testlist:UnitTests" />
  <arg value="/testlist:IntegrationTests" if="${CCNetBuildCondition=='ForceBuild'}" />
</exec>

Step 5 : Using Ms-Test with coverage

In Ms-test you can specify that you also want coverage to run, see for setting it up.
I just made a company rule that for code coverage to be ran via ccnet, the testsettings file must be named : CodeCoverage.testsettings,
with a specific base name(cover_me) and no timestamps appended. Just to make things easier for me.
If you want MS-Test to run coverage, just pass the testsettings as an extra argument :

<exec program="${mstest_exe}" failonerror="false" resultproperty="testresult.temp" >
  <arg value="/testmetadata:${mstest_metadatafile}" />
  <arg value="/resultsfile:MStest_Results.xml" />
  <arg value="/testsettings:CodeCoverage.testsettings" />
  <arg value="/testlist:UnitTests" />
  <arg value="/testlist:IntegrationTests" if="${CCNetBuildCondition=='ForceBuild'}" />
</exec>

There is a catch : Ms-Test from VS2010 does not produce XML anymore, see this post for a solution. You really need the dll from VS2008 for it to work, the VS2010 has another interface sadly enough. So best to digg up you DVD of VS2008. I've updated that program a bit so that is also removes the Lines from the coverage result file, making it a lot smaller to merge. Below is my source code (its VB.Net)

Showing the results

I've added 2 new xsl files (MsTestReport2010.xsl and MsTest2010Cover.xsl) to CCNet, you can use these in the dashboard in the build plugins.

<buildPlugins>
    ...
    <xslReportBuildPlugin description="Ms Test" actionName="MSTest" xslFileName="xsl\MsTestReport2010.xsl" />           
    <xslReportBuildPlugin description="MS Test Coverage" actionName="MSTest2008Cover" xslFileName="xsl\MsTestCover2010.xsl"/>
    ...
</buildPlugins>

Attachments

CCNet.config

<cruisecontrol xmlns:cb="urn:ccnet.config.builder">
<!-- preprocessor settings -->
<cb:define WorkingDir="D:\WorkingFolders\" />
<cb:define WorkingMainDir="D:\ArtifactFolders\" />
<cb:define ArtifactsDir="\Artifacts" />

<cb:define name="vsts_ci">
    <server>http://tfs-server:8080/tfs/default/</server>
    <username>cruise</username>
    <password>**********</password>
    <domain>tfs-server</domain>
    <autoGetSource>true</autoGetSource>
    <cleanCopy>true</cleanCopy>
    <force>true</force>
    <deleteWorkspace>true</deleteWorkspace>
</cb:define>

<cb:define name="vsts_package">
    <server>http://tfs-server:8080/tfs/default/</server>
    <username>cruise</username>
    <password>**********</password>
    <domain>tfs-server</domain>
    <autoGetSource>true</autoGetSource>
    <cleanCopy>true</cleanCopy>
    <force>true</force>
    <applyLabel>true</applyLabel>
    <deleteWorkspace>true</deleteWorkspace>
</cb:define>

<cb:define name="common_publishers">
    <merge>
        <files>
            <file>Coverage.xml</file>
            <file>MStest_Results.xml</file>
            <file>simian.xml</file>         
        </files>
    </merge>
    <xmllogger />
    <statistics />
    <modificationHistory  onlyLogWhenChangesFound="true" />
    <artifactcleanup   cleanUpMethod="KeepLastXSubDirs"   cleanUpValue="2" />
    <artifactcleanup   cleanUpMethod="KeepLastXBuilds"    cleanUpValue="25000" />
    <email from="CruiseControl@TheBuilder.com" 
          mailhost="TheMailer.Company.com" 
          includeDetails="TRUE">
        <groups/>
        <users/>
        <converters>
            <ldapConverter domainName="Company"  />
        </converters> 
        <modifierNotificationTypes>
           <NotificationType>Failed</NotificationType>
           <NotificationType>Fixed</NotificationType>
        </modifierNotificationTypes>
    </email> 
</cb:define>

<cb:define name="nant_common">
  <executable>c:\Tools\nant\bin\nant.exe</executable>
  <nologo>true</nologo>
  <buildTimeoutSeconds>1800</buildTimeoutSeconds>
  <buildArgs>-D:useExtraMsbuildLogger=true  -D:isCI=true  -listener:CCNetListener,CCNetListener -D:configuration=Debug</buildArgs>
</cb:define> 

<cb:define name="nant_package">
  <executable>c:\Tools\nant\bin\nant.exe</executable>
  <nologo>true</nologo>
  <buildTimeoutSeconds>1800</buildTimeoutSeconds>
  <buildArgs> -D:useExtraMsbuildLogger=true  -D:CreateInstallZips=true -listener:CCNetListener,CCNetListener -D:configuration=Release</buildArgs>
</cb:define> 

<cb:define name="nant_qa">
  <executable>c:\Tools\nant\bin\nant.exe</executable>
  <nologo>true</nologo>
  <buildTimeoutSeconds>3600</buildTimeoutSeconds>
  <buildArgs>-D:useExtraMsbuildLogger=true   -listener:CCNetListener,CCNetListener  -D:configuration=DebugCA</buildArgs>
</cb:define> 

<cb:define name="nant_target_CI">
   <targetList>
        <target>clean</target>
        <target>compile</target>
        <target>test</target> 
   </targetList>
</cb:define> 
 
<cb:define name="nant_target_qa">
   <targetList>
        <target>clean</target>
        <target>simian</target>
        <target>compile</target>
        <target>cover</target>      
   </targetList>
</cb:define> 

<cb:define name="nant_target_package">
   <targetList>     
        <target>clean</target>
        <target>compile</target>
        <target>test</target>
        <target>make_package</target>
        <target>makehelp</target>
   </targetList>
</cb:define> 
<!-- end preprocessor settings -->


<!-- Projects -->
 <cb:scope ProjectName="ProjectX">
   <cb:define ProjectType="_CI" />
    <project name="$(ProjectName)$(ProjectType)" queue="Q1" queuePriority="901">
      <workingDirectory>$(WorkingDir)$(ProjectName)$(ProjectType)</workingDirectory>
      <artifactDirectory>$(WorkingMainDir)$(ProjectName)$(ProjectType)$(ArtifactsDir)</artifactDirectory>

      <labeller type="defaultlabeller" />

      <sourcecontrol type="vsts">
          <workspace>$(ProjectName)</workspace>
          <project>$/$(ProjectName)/Main</project>
          <cb:vsts_ci/>          
      </sourcecontrol> 

      <tasks>
         <nant>
            <cb:nant_common/>
            <cb:nant_target_CI />
         </nant>    
      </tasks>

      <publishers>
         <cb:common_publishers />
      </publishers>

    </project>
  </cb:scope>

 <cb:scope ProjectName="ProjectX">
   <cb:define ProjectType="_Package" />
    <project name="$(ProjectName)$(ProjectType)" queue="Q1" queuePriority="801">
      <workingDirectory>$(WorkingDir)$(ProjectName)$(ProjectType)</workingDirectory>
      <artifactDirectory>$(WorkingMainDir)$(ProjectName)$(ProjectType)$(ArtifactsDir)</artifactDirectory>

      <labeller type="defaultlabeller">
         <prefix>1.0.1.</prefix>
         <incrementOnFailure>false</incrementOnFailure>
      </labeller>

      <sourcecontrol type="vsts">
          <workspace>$(ProjectName)</workspace>
          <project>$/$(ProjectName)/Main</project>
          <cb:vsts_package/>             
      </sourcecontrol> 

      <tasks>
         <nant>
            <cb:nant_package/>
            <cb:nant_target_package />
         </nant>    
      </tasks>

      <publishers>
         <cb:common_publishers />
      </publishers>

    </project>
  </cb:scope>

 <cb:scope ProjectName="ProjectX">
   <cb:define ProjectType="_QA" />
    <project name="$(ProjectName)$(ProjectType)" queue="Q1" queuePriority="801">
      <workingDirectory>$(WorkingDir)$(ProjectName)$(ProjectType)</workingDirectory>
      <artifactDirectory>$(WorkingMainDir)$(ProjectName)$(ProjectType)$(ArtifactsDir)</artifactDirectory>

      <labeller type="defaultlabeller" />

      <sourcecontrol type="vsts">
          <workspace>$(ProjectName)</workspace>
          <project>$/$(ProjectName)/Main</project>
          <cb:vsts_package/>             
      </sourcecontrol> 

      <tasks>
         <nant>
            <cb:nant_common/>
            <cb:nant_target_qa />
         </nant>    
      </tasks>

      <publishers>
         <cb:common_publishers />
      </publishers>

    </project>
  </cb:scope>
  
</cruisecontrol>

Nant Build Script

<project default="help">
    <property name="solution"                           unless="${property::exists('solution')}"                            value="ProjectX.sln" />    
    <property name="configuration"                      unless="${property::exists('configuration')}"                       value="Debug"   />    
    <property name="CCNetListenerFile"                  unless="${property::exists('CCNetListenerFile')}"                   value="listen.xml"    />    
    <property name="msbuildverbose"                     unless="${property::exists('msbuildverbose')}"                      value="normal"             />    
    <property name="CCNetLabel"                         unless="${property::exists('CCNetLabel')}"                          value="0.0.0.0"      />     

    <property name="mstest_metadatafile"                value="ProjectX.vsmdi" />
    
    <property overwrite="false" name="Simian_exe"           value="c:\Tools\simian\bin\simian-2.3.32.exe"  />
    <property overwrite="false" name="msbuildlogger"        value="C:\Program Files\CruiseControl.NET\server\MSBuildListener.dll"                     />
    <property overwrite="false" name="versionInfofile"      value="VersionInfo.cs" />
    <property overwrite="false" name="mstest_exe"           value="C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\mstest.exe" />

    <!-- custom scripts --> 
     <script language="C#" prefix="RuWi">
          <references>
              <include name="System.Xml.dll" />
              <include name="System.dll" />
          </references>
          <imports>
              <import namespace="System.Text" />
          </imports>
          <code>
            <![CDATA[
                [Function("UpdateVersionFile")]
                public static bool UpdateVersionFile(string inputFile, string newVersion, bool debugMode)
                {
                    bool ok = true;
                    try
                    {
                        System.IO.StreamReader versionFile = new System.IO.StreamReader(inputFile, System.Text.Encoding.ASCII);
                        string line = "";
                        System.Text.StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
                        string searchPatternVersion = @"(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)";
                        string searchPatternAssemblyProduct = string.Format(@"AssemblyProduct\({0}(.*?)\{0}", "\"");
                        string replacePatternAssemblyProduct = string.Format(@"AssemblyProduct({0}(Debug)${1}1{2}{0}", "\"", "{", "}");

                        while (!versionFile.EndOfStream)
                        {
                            line = versionFile.ReadLine();

                            if (System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.IsMatch(line, searchPatternVersion) && (line.Contains("AssemblyFileVersion")))
                            {
                                line = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(line, searchPatternVersion, newVersion);
                            }

                            if (debugMode && System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.IsMatch(line, searchPatternAssemblyProduct))
                            {
                                line = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(line, searchPatternAssemblyProduct, replacePatternAssemblyProduct);
                            }

                            result.AppendLine(line);
                        }

                        versionFile.Close();

                        System.IO.StreamWriter updatedVersionfile = new System.IO.StreamWriter(inputFile);
                        updatedVersionfile.Write(result.ToString());
                        updatedVersionfile.Close();
                    }
                    catch (Exception ex)
                    {
                        ok = false;
                        Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString());
                    }
                    return ok;
                }
                ]]>
          </code>
     </script>

    <target name="help" >   
        <echo message="Removed for keeping the file shorter." />
    </target>
    
    <target name="clean" description="deletes all created files">
        <delete >
            <fileset>
                <patternset >
                    <include name="**/bin/**"  />
                    <include name="**/obj/**"  />
                    <include name="Coverage*.xml" />
                    <include name="*.zip"  />
                    <include name="MStest_Results.xml" />
                    <include name="simian.xml" />                   
                </patternset>
            </fileset>
        </delete>
    </target>
    
    <target name="adjustversion" description="Adjusts the version in the version.info file">
        <if test="${not file::exists(versionInfofile)}">
            <fail message="file: ${versionInfofile}  which must contains the version info was NOT found" />
        </if>

        <echo message="Setting version to ${CCNetLabel}" />        
       
        <property name="debugMode" value = "False" />
        <property name="debugMode" value = "True"  if="${configuration=='Debug'}"  />
        <if test="${not RuWi::UpdateVersionFile(versionInfofile,CCNetLabel,debugMode)}">
            <fail message="updating file: ${versionInfofile}  which must contains the version info failed" />
        </if>
    </target>
    
    <target name="compile" description="compiles the solution in the wanted configuration" depends="adjustversion">                         
        <msbuild  project="${solution}" >
            <arg value="/p:Configuration=${configuration}" />
            <arg value="/p:CCNetListenerFile=${CCNetListenerFile}" />
            <arg value="/v:${msbuildverbose}" />
            <arg value="/l:${msbuildlogger}" /> 
        </msbuild>
    </target>

   <target name="test" description="runs the tests"    depends="deploy.services">
        <if test="${string::get-length(mstest_metadatafile)>0}" >
            <exec program="${mstest_exe}">
              <arg value="/testmetadata:${mstest_metadatafile}" />
              <arg value="/resultsfile:MStest_Results.xml" />
              <arg value="/testlist:UnitTests" />
              <arg value="/testlist:IntegrationTests" if="${CCNetBuildCondition=='ForceBuild'}" />
            </exec>             
        </if>
    </target>

    <target name = "cover" description="runs the tests with coverage" >     
        <if test="${string::get-length(mstest_metadatafile)>0}" >
        <!-- 
            company rule : code coverage settings must be set via this file 
            with the following NamingScheme : baseName="cover_me" appendTimeStamp="false" useDefault="false" 
        -->
             <if test="${file::exists('CodeCoverage.testsettings')}"> 

                <exec program="${mstest_exe}" failonerror="false" resultproperty="testresult.temp" >
                  <arg value="/testmetadata:${mstest_metadatafile}" />
                  <arg value="/resultsfile:MStest_Results.xml" />
                  <arg value="/testsettings:CodeCoverage.testsettings" />
                  <arg value="/testlist:UnitTests" />
                  <arg value="/testlist:IntegrationTests" if="${CCNetBuildCondition=='ForceBuild'}" />            
                </exec>             
                
                <property name="TestsOK" value="false" unless="${int::parse(testresult.temp)==0}"/> 

                <property name="DataCoverageFilePath" value="${RuWi::FindFile('cover_me','data.coverage')}"  />
                <property name="TurnCoverageFileIntoXml_exe" value="C:\Tools\TurnCoverageFileIntoXml\TurnCoverageFileIntoXml.exe"  />

                <fail message="No data.coverage found in cover_me folder" unless="${string::get-length(DataCoverageFilePath)>0}" />

                <echo message="DataCoverageFilePath : ${DataCoverageFilePath}" />               

                <exec program="${TurnCoverageFileIntoXml_exe}" >
                    <arg value="${DataCoverageFilePath}" />
                    <arg value="cover_me\Out" />
                    <arg value="NCoverExplorer.xml" />
                </exec>
        
                <fail message="Failures reported in unit tests." unless="${TestsOK}" />
            </if>
        </if>

    </target>
    
    <target name="simian" description="find duplicate code" >       
        <exec program="${Simian_exe}" failonerror="false">
            <arg value="-includes=**/*.cs" />
            <arg value="-excludes=**/*Designer.*" />
            <arg value="-excludes=**/*Generated.*" />
            <arg value="-excludes=**/*Reference.*" />
            <arg value="-excludes=**/obj/*" />
            <arg value="-threshold=10" />
            <arg value="-formatter=xml:simian.xml" />
        </exec>
    </target>
    
    <target name="deploy.services" description="deploys all service (web/wcf)" /> <!-- company specific, just copies files to the iis folder     -->      
    <target name="make_package" description="makes install packages" />           <!-- company specific, creates install packages and zips them  -->
    <target name="makehelp" description="makes install packages" />               <!-- company specific, makes user help with custom tool        -->
        
</project>

Source code for Ms-Test binary2Xml

Imports Microsoft.VisualStudio.CodeCoverage

Module Module1

    Sub Main()
        Dim Arguments As String()
        Dim obc = Console.BackgroundColor
        Dim returnValue As Integer = 0

        Try
            Arguments = Environment.GetCommandLineArgs

            If Arguments.Length <> 4 Then

                Console.BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.Blue
                Console.WriteLine("Usage : {0} DataCoverageFilePath CoveredFilesPath ResultXmlFilePath", Arguments(0))
                Console.BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGreen
                Console.WriteLine(" {0}  In\LTREMRUBEN\data.coverage Out d:\codecover.xml", Arguments(0))
                Console.BackgroundColor = obc
                returnValue = 1
                Exit Try
            End If

            Dim DataCoverageFilePath As String = Arguments(1)
            Dim CoveredFilesPath As String = Arguments(2)
            Dim ResultXmlFilePath As String = Arguments(3)

            CoverageInfoManager.ExePath = CoveredFilesPath
            CoverageInfoManager.SymPath = CoveredFilesPath

            Console.WriteLine("converting {0}", DataCoverageFilePath)
            Dim coverage = CoverageInfoManager.CreateInfoFromFile(DataCoverageFilePath)

            Dim CoverResult = coverage.BuildDataSet(Nothing)

            Dim CoverResultStream As New IO.MemoryStream
            CoverResult.WriteXml(CoverResultStream)

            Console.WriteLine("Initial Size in bytes : {0}", CoverResultStream.Length)
            CoverResultStream.Position = 0


            Console.WriteLine("Cleaning up xml info ...")
            Dim CoverResultXmlDoc As New Xml.XmlDocument()
            CoverResultXmlDoc.Load(CoverResultStream)

            Dim LineInfos = CoverResultXmlDoc.SelectNodes("//Lines")

            For Each lineInfo As Xml.XmlNode In LineInfos
                lineInfo.RemoveAll()
            Next

            Dim SourceFileNameInfos = CoverResultXmlDoc.SelectNodes("//SourceFileNames")
            For Each SourceFileNameInfo As Xml.XmlNode In SourceFileNameInfos
                SourceFileNameInfo.RemoveAll()
            Next

            CoverResultXmlDoc.PreserveWhitespace = False
            CoverResultXmlDoc.Normalize()
            CoverResultXmlDoc.Save(ResultXmlFilePath)

            Console.WriteLine("Compressed Size in bytes : {0}", New IO.FileInfo(ResultXmlFilePath).Length)

            Console.WriteLine("Done.")

        Catch ex As Exception
            Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString)
        End Try
    End Sub

End Module

Statistics publisher

2011-09-10T12:48:00.005+02:00

There was an issue that the statistics publisher does not work correctly. Now I know the statistics publisher is an old one, and one where the configuration is rarely altered, besides the 10 standard foreseen statistics.
Gathering extra statistics is not that difficult, add a name for the element, and a XPath expression. For example:

<statistic name="AmountOfFailures" xpath="sum(//test-results/@failures)" />

Now this is good when the build log is simple xml, but when you have sections with namespaces, things become nasty.
If you're working with VS2010, and are merging the test results, you have encountered this problem before. These test results are stored in the "http://microsoft.com/schemas/VisualStudio/TeamTest/2010" namespace.
This problem is now fixed, I've added support for namespaces.

Below you'll find a xmlFile containing test data coming from a demo project, and I'll use this file as an example :
Suppose you want to know the total amount of tests and the amount of failed ones. This information can be retrieved via the following XPath queries : /TestRun/ResultSummary/Counters/@total and /TestRun/ResultSummary/Counters/@failed
Because the test-result file is merged into the master buildlog file, the TestRun node is not the root node anymore.
Normally you could/would fix this by changing it into //TestRun/ResultSummary/Counters/@total, giving the following config for the statistic :

<statistic name="AmountOfTests" xpath="//TestRun/ResultSummary/Counters/@total" />

But this gives MS.Internal.Xml.XPath.XPathSelectionIterator as result. Not very intuitive if you do not work with XPath every day.The problem is the // operator, XPath asumes there can be many TestResult nodes in the xmlfile(even if we know there will only be one), and returns an iterator. To bypass this kind of thing, a FirstMatch class was (and still is) foreseen to handle this, resulting in following setting :

<firstMatch name="AmountOfTests" xpath="//TestRun/ResultSummary/Counters/@total" />

But now the result is Null (empty string) in the file. With the support for namespaces, the config is as follows :

<firstMatch name="AmountOfTests" xpath="//mstest:TestRun/mstest:ResultSummary/mstest:Counters/@total" >
  <namespaces>
     <namespaceMapping prefix="mstest" url="http://microsoft.com/schemas/VisualStudio/TeamTest/2010" />
  </namespaces>
</firstMatch>

Resulting in the wanted result of 2 for the file below. This is a huge step forward, but there is still a problem :
suppose you want some statistic with a calculation of a setting with a namespace, and one without a namespace.
This poses a problem with XSLT 1.0, because we can not set a prefix for the default namespace. To overcome that problem we'll have to support XSLT 2.0. where there is functionality foreseen.
This request is added on the todo list.
The test file :



  <TestRun id="32083ab3-68fe-40ab-a13d-c289aef12a28"
           name="cover_me"
           runUser="ruben"
           xmlns="http://microsoft.com/schemas/VisualStudio/TeamTest/2010">
    <TestSettings name="Cover"
                  id="9839cf84-0738-4c12-885d-99158bdda72f">
      <Description>These are default test settings for a local test run.</Description>
      <Deployment userDeploymentRoot="C:\Users\ruben\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\CCNetStatistics"
                  useDefaultDeploymentRoot="false"
                  runDeploymentRoot="cover_me" />
      <NamingScheme baseName="cover_me"
                    appendTimeStamp="false"
                    useDefault="false" />
      <Execution>
        <TestTypeSpecific>
          <UnitTestRunConfig testTypeId="13cdc9d9-ddb5-4fa4-a97d-d965ccfc6d4b">
            <AssemblyResolution>
              <TestDirectory useLoadContext="true" />
            </AssemblyResolution>
          </UnitTestRunConfig>
        </TestTypeSpecific>
        <AgentRule name="LocalMachineDefaultRole">
          <DataCollectors>
            <DataCollector uri="datacollector://microsoft/CodeCoverage/1.0"
                           assemblyQualifiedName="Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.CodeCoverage.CoveragePlugIn, Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.Plugins.CodeCoverage, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"
                           friendlyName="Code Coverage">
              <Configuration>
                <CodeCoverage xmlns="">
                  <Regular>
                    <CodeCoverageItem binaryFile="C:\Users\ruben\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\CCNetStatistics\CCNetStatistics\bin\Debug\Agents.dll"
                                      pdbFile="C:\Users\ruben\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\CCNetStatistics\CCNetStatistics\bin\Debug\Agents.instr.pdb"
                                      instrumentInPlace="true" />
                  </Regular>
                </CodeCoverage>
              </Configuration>
            </DataCollector>
          </DataCollectors>
        </AgentRule>
      </Execution>
    </TestSettings>
    <Times creation="2011-09-04T20:40:22.8989434+02:00"
           queuing="2011-09-04T20:40:24.1937456+02:00"
           start="2011-09-04T20:40:24.3341459+02:00"
           finish="2011-09-04T20:40:28.0469524+02:00" />
    <ResultSummary outcome="Failed">
      <Counters total="2"
                executed="2"
                passed="1"
                error="0"
                failed="1"
                timeout="0"
                aborted="0"
                inconclusive="0"
                passedButRunAborted="0"
                notRunnable="0"
                notExecuted="0"
                disconnected="0"
                warning="0"
                completed="0"
                inProgress="0"
                pending="0" />
      <ResultFiles>
        <ResultFile path="LTREMRUBEN\data.coverage" />
      </ResultFiles>
    </ResultSummary>
    <TestDefinitions>
      <UnitTest name="TestInfiltration"
                storage="c:\users\ruben\documents\visual studio 2010\projects\ccnetstatistics\testagents\bin\debug\testagents.dll"
                id="93fe6bec-7340-59e7-ba45-0a396dc614ff">
        <Execution id="792491ae-0c70-45e3-a474-1f1cb130226b" />
        <TestMethod codeBase="c:/users/ruben/documents/visual studio 2010/projects/ccnetstatistics/testagents/bin/debug/TestAgents.DLL"
                    adapterTypeName="Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestTypes.Unit.UnitTestAdapter, Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.Tips.UnitTest.Adapter, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"
                    className="TestAgents.UnitTest1, TestAgents, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null"
                    name="TestInfiltration" />
      </UnitTest>
      <UnitTest name="TestReport"
                storage="c:\users\ruben\documents\visual studio 2010\projects\ccnetstatistics\testagents\bin\debug\testagents.dll"
                id="09504e3d-ea5f-fda7-5ee0-32f8cc895784">
        <Execution id="c98799b7-8675-43b9-ae03-7eb7fd2acb70" />
        <TestMethod codeBase="c:/users/ruben/documents/visual studio 2010/projects/ccnetstatistics/testagents/bin/debug/TestAgents.DLL"
                    adapterTypeName="Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestTypes.Unit.UnitTestAdapter, Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.Tips.UnitTest.Adapter, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"
                    className="TestAgents.UnitTest1, TestAgents, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null"
                    name="TestReport" />
      </UnitTest>
    </TestDefinitions>
    <TestLists>
      <TestList name="Smoke"
                id="39ed6b71-dbd6-41f1-a30d-eebe96ec74ff"
                parentListId="8c43106b-9dc1-4907-a29f-aa66a61bf5b6">
        <TestLinks>
          <TestLink id="93fe6bec-7340-59e7-ba45-0a396dc614ff"
                    name="TestInfiltration"
                    storage="c:\users\ruben\documents\visual studio 2010\projects\ccnetstatistics\testagents\bin\debug\testagents.dll"
                    type="Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestTypes.Unit.UnitTestElement, Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.Tips.UnitTest.ObjectModel, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
          <TestLink id="09504e3d-ea5f-fda7-5ee0-32f8cc895784"
                    name="TestReport"
                    storage="c:\users\ruben\documents\visual studio 2010\projects\ccnetstatistics\testagents\bin\debug\testagents.dll"
                    type="Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestTypes.Unit.UnitTestElement, Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.Tips.UnitTest.ObjectModel, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
        </TestLinks>
      </TestList>
      <TestList name="Lists of Results"
                id="8c43106b-9dc1-4907-a29f-aa66a61bf5b6" />
      <TestList name="All Loaded Results"
                id="19431567-8539-422a-85d7-44ee4e166bda" />
    </TestLists>
    <TestEntries>
      <TestEntry testId="93fe6bec-7340-59e7-ba45-0a396dc614ff"
                 executionId="792491ae-0c70-45e3-a474-1f1cb130226b"
                 testListId="39ed6b71-dbd6-41f1-a30d-eebe96ec74ff" />
      <TestEntry testId="09504e3d-ea5f-fda7-5ee0-32f8cc895784"
                 executionId="c98799b7-8675-43b9-ae03-7eb7fd2acb70"
                 testListId="39ed6b71-dbd6-41f1-a30d-eebe96ec74ff" />
    </TestEntries>
    <Results>
      <UnitTestResult executionId="792491ae-0c70-45e3-a474-1f1cb130226b"
                      testId="93fe6bec-7340-59e7-ba45-0a396dc614ff"
                      testName="TestInfiltration"
                      computerName="LTREMRUBEN"
                      duration="00:00:00.0342893"
                      startTime="2011-09-04T20:40:25.9721488+02:00"
                      endTime="2011-09-04T20:40:26.3777495+02:00"
                      testType="13cdc9d9-ddb5-4fa4-a97d-d965ccfc6d4b"
                      outcome="Passed"
                      testListId="39ed6b71-dbd6-41f1-a30d-eebe96ec74ff"
                      relativeResultsDirectory="792491ae-0c70-45e3-a474-1f1cb130226b">
      </UnitTestResult>
      <UnitTestResult executionId="c98799b7-8675-43b9-ae03-7eb7fd2acb70"
                      testId="09504e3d-ea5f-fda7-5ee0-32f8cc895784"
                      testName="TestReport"
                      computerName="LTREMRUBEN"
                      duration="00:00:00.0538581"
                      startTime="2011-09-04T20:40:26.4089495+02:00"
                      endTime="2011-09-04T20:40:26.4713496+02:00"
                      testType="13cdc9d9-ddb5-4fa4-a97d-d965ccfc6d4b"
                      outcome="Failed"
                      testListId="39ed6b71-dbd6-41f1-a30d-eebe96ec74ff"
                      relativeResultsDirectory="c98799b7-8675-43b9-ae03-7eb7fd2acb70">
        <Output>
          <ErrorInfo>
            <Message>Assert.AreEqual failed. Expected:&lt;&gt;. Actual:&lt;all went ok&gt;. </Message>
            <StackTrace>
              at TestAgents.UnitTest1.TestReport() in c:\users\ruben\documents\visual studio 2010\Projects\CCNetStatistics\TestAgents\UnitTest1.vb:line 17
            </StackTrace>
          </ErrorInfo>
        </Output>
      </UnitTestResult>
    </Results>
  </TestRun>

New site for CCNet

2011-09-07T20:05:00.002+02:00

As you may have read, we moved away from Thoughtworks hosting to another server :

After years of good collaboration with Thoughtworks, it appeared that Thoughtworks had less resources to spent for CCNet.
This problem came painfully visible when their site was hacked with a virus. It took a long time for the help page to come back up, and the build server is still not up.

Some months ago we (the active members) decided to move the hosting to another server, so we would be less dependent on Thoughtworks. No hard feelings, it were great years of cooperation but time moved on.

The reason it took a few months to set everything up was due to lack of time of us. Communication could have been better, but we're all doing this (maintaining CCNet) in our own free time, without getting paid. Hopefully this downtime will not happen again.

The license of CCNet is still the same as it was before the move, we just moved the build server and the documentation site, everything else stays the same till further notice :-)
The move to the new site also has some plus points :

we can update / alter the site at any time.
there is 1 site for the wiki, bug reports and forum (before there was Jira and Confluence, no forum) meaning 1 user and password
a Linux build server is also up and running, meaning more Mono compatibility.
moved from svn to Git, which should make it a lot easier for people to contribute.
Chili has some options that Jira did not have : Calendar, Gantt chart, ....

Now lets get CCNet back in the picture, stay tuned for more news.

This server is provided by Daniel Nauck, so I owe him a lot for this !
Now we have a build server back :-)

It seems that the build is broken, so we need to fix that asap, and continue to update the new documentation wiki. When this is done, we can start to update CCNet like before.

Keeping you posted ...

Yet another trigger : installTrigger

2011-07-12T16:28:00.017+02:00

At work I use CCNet for 2 main different things :
° as Continuous Integration : compile, test, package, code statistics, ...
° as Continuous Installation : install our software at the customers site ( see articles)

For the installation part, I previously changed the ccnet.config to reflect the needed changes. For example change the requested time of a schedule trigger, add the names of the server(s) where to install or not to install the software.
Now this works great, but it is error prone!
Remember ccnet.config is the core configuration of CCNet, a typo there could stop the service. And reviving it is not fun, remember I have a small 100 servers to maintain!!

So the idea came for a new trigger, to remove the parts that change a lot in ccnet.config to another file. Just moving to another file is not enough though, if there is an error in that file, ccnet may not crash. Meaning that using the pre-processor or XML-Entities is out of the question.

Now I already have an xml file for each customer, that holds what software the customer has, what sql server settings are needed, where the software needs to come, ....

Meaning this trigger should just read this xml file, and return the needed things.
I just needed to add the wanted integration time and wanted version to this file, to get it to work.

The new trigger is the InstallTrigger (cool name actually) and is a copy of the schedule trigger with the following extra parts :
° CheckInstallationNeededForProgramToInstall (the name of the program as known in the xml file)
° DeploySettingFilePath : where the xml file is located
° CruiseInstallProject : the corresponding CCNet project name that does the installation (more on this later)
° UpdateDeploySettingsProject : Name of CCNet project that downloads updated xml files from the ftp site
° removed the Time property, as this will come from the xml file

The most important things of the code :
° at start, get the wanted datetime of the xml file, if the date is before today, copy the time part to todays date
° when an integration is done, and the installation failed, get the wanted datetime from the xmlfile, but add 1 day (re-schedule automatically).
° when an integration is done, and the installation was ok, return datetime.maxvalue
° when the UpdateDeploySettingsProject ran, re-read the xml file.
° use datetime.utcNow iso dateTime.Now, this is a LOT faster (look here

Now why I added the CruiseInstallProject property?
One could easily say that this is not needed, because the trigger is inside the project that will install the requested software.
Wrong bet :-)
Remember a previous post : forcing multiple builds at once

So when I want to install, let's say Bookkeeping, also our security module (for login and so) needs to be installed.
So I have the following CCNet projects :

CCNetProjectName	InstallTrigger property cruiseInstallProject	Tasks
InstallSecurity	InstallSecurity	install security program
InstallBookKeeping		install bookkeeping program
FullInstallBookkeeping	InstallBookKeeping	ForceBuild InstallSecurity ForceBuild InstallBookKeeping

This makes it a lot safer to do the installations, and even gives us an easy way to schedule the same program at different dates/times for different customers.
It is the same CCNet project, just the xml file for the involved customer needs to change.

Below is the code of the InstallTrigger.


Imports Exortech.NetReflector
Imports ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Remote
Imports ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Core.Config
Imports System.Globalization
Imports ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Core.Util

<ReflectorType("installTrigger")> _
Public Class InstallTrigger
    Implements ITrigger

    Private m_name As String
    Private dtProvider As DateTimeProvider
    Private m_nextBuild As DateTime = DateTime.MinValue
    Private m_previousBuild As DateTime
    Private triggered As Boolean
    Private _includeServerNames As String()
    Private _excludeServerNames As String()

    Private _serverConfig As Data.DeploySetting = Nothing
    Private _requestedInstallDate As DateTime = DateTime.MaxValue
    Private _cruiseInstallProject As String = Nothing
    Private _cruiseInstallProjectStateFile As String

    Private _updateDeploySettingsStateFile As String
    Private _UpdateDeploySettingsVersion As String
    Private _UpdateDeploySettingsProject As String = "UpdateDeploySettings"
    Private _UpdateDeploySettingsProjectLastTimeChecked As DateTime
    Private _integrationDone As Boolean
    Private _ServerNameIsOk As Boolean

    Public Sub New()
        Me.New(New DateTimeProvider())
    End Sub

    Public Sub New(ByVal dtProvider As DateTimeProvider)
        Me.dtProvider = dtProvider
    End Sub

    <ReflectorArray("includeServerNames", required:=False)> _
    Public Property IncludeServerNames() As String()
        Get
            Return _includeServerNames
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As String())
            _includeServerNames = value
        End Set
    End Property

    <ReflectorArray("excludeServerNames", required:=False)> _
    Public Property ExcludeServerNames() As String()
        Get
            Return _excludeServerNames
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As String())
            _excludeServerNames = value
        End Set
    End Property

    <ReflectorProperty("name", Required:=False)> _
    Public Property Name() As String
        Get
            If m_name Is Nothing Then
                m_name = [GetType]().Name
            End If
            Return m_name
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As String)
            m_name = value
        End Set
    End Property

    <ReflectorProperty("buildCondition", Required:=False)> _
    Public BuildCondition As BuildCondition = BuildCondition.IfModificationExists

    <ReflectorArray("weekDays", Required:=False)> _
    Public WeekDays As DayOfWeek() = DirectCast(DayOfWeek.GetValues(GetType(DayOfWeek)), DayOfWeek())

    Private _checkInstallationNeededForProgramToInstall As String
    Private _deploySettingFilePath As String = "D:\InstallPath"

    <ReflectorProperty("checkInstallationNeededForProgramToInstall", required:=True)> _
    Public Property CheckInstallationNeededForProgramToInstall() As String
        Get
            Return Me._checkInstallationNeededForProgramToInstall
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As String)
            Me._checkInstallationNeededForProgramToInstall = value
        End Set
    End Property

    <ReflectorProperty("deploySettingFilePath", required:=False)> _
    Public Property DeploySettingFilePath() As String
        Get
            Return Me._deploySettingFilePath
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As String)
            Me._deploySettingFilePath = value
        End Set
    End Property

    <ReflectorProperty("updateDeploySettingsProject", required:=True)> _
    Public Property UpdateDeploySettingsProject() As String
        Get
            Return Me._UpdateDeploySettingsProject
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As String)
            Me._UpdateDeploySettingsProject = value
        End Set
    End Property


    <ReflectorProperty("cruiseInstallProject", required:=True)> _
    Public Property CruiseInstallProject As String
        Get
            Return _cruiseInstallProject
        End Get
        Set(value As String)
            _cruiseInstallProject = value
        End Set
    End Property

    Private Sub SetNextIntegrationDateTime()

        Dim now As DateTime = dtProvider.Now

        m_nextBuild = RequestedInstallDateTime()
        If m_nextBuild = DateTime.MaxValue Then Return

        If now >= m_nextBuild OrElse now.Date = m_previousBuild.Date Then
            m_nextBuild = m_nextBuild.AddDays(1)
        End If

        m_nextBuild = CalculateNextIntegrationTime(m_nextBuild)
    End Sub

    Private Function CalculateNextIntegrationTime(ByVal nextIntegration As DateTime) As DateTime
        While True

            If IsValidWeekDay(nextIntegration.DayOfWeek) Then
                Exit While
            End If
            nextIntegration = nextIntegration.AddDays(1)
        End While
        Return nextIntegration
    End Function

    Private Function IsValidWeekDay(ByVal nextIntegrationDay As DayOfWeek) As Boolean
        Return Array.IndexOf(WeekDays, nextIntegrationDay) >= 0
    End Function

    Public Overridable Sub IntegrationCompleted() Implements ITrigger.IntegrationCompleted

        Dim now As DateTime = dtProvider.Now

        If triggered Then
            m_previousBuild = now

            'to force a re-read of the deploymentsettings file after X seconds.
            'State file does not seem to be updated yet
            _UpdateDeploySettingsProjectLastTimeChecked = DateTime.UtcNow
            _integrationDone = True

        End If
        triggered = False
    End Sub

    Public ReadOnly Property NextBuild() As DateTime Implements ITrigger.NextBuild
        Get
            If m_nextBuild = DateTime.MinValue Then
                'first time initialise
                FirstTimeInitialize()

                If _ServerNameIsOk Then
                    ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Core.Util.Log.Debug("Loading deploysettings file ")
                    _serverConfig = New Data.DeploySetting(DeploySettingFilePath)
                    SetNextIntegrationDateTime()
                End If
            End If

            If Not _ServerNameIsOk Then Return DateTime.MaxValue

            'to keep watching the deploy settings file after a second 'Fire'
            If isDeploySettingsFileIsUpdated() Then
                ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Core.Util.Log.Debug("Re-loading deploysettings file")
                _serverConfig = New Data.DeploySetting(DeploySettingFilePath)
                SetNextIntegrationDateTime()
            End If

            Return m_nextBuild
        End Get
    End Property

    Public Function Fire() As IntegrationRequest Implements ITrigger.Fire
        Dim now As DateTime = dtProvider.Now

        If now > NextBuild AndAlso IsValidWeekDay(now.DayOfWeek) Then
            triggered = True
            Return New IntegrationRequest(BuildCondition, Name)
        End If

        Return Nothing
    End Function

    Private Function ServerNameIsOk() As Boolean
        Dim includeServersSpecified As Boolean = IncludeServerNames IsNot Nothing AndAlso IncludeServerNames.Length > 0
        Dim excludeServersSpecified As Boolean = ExcludeServerNames IsNot Nothing AndAlso ExcludeServerNames.Length > 0

        If includeServersSpecified Then
            For Each srv In IncludeServerNames
                If srv.Equals(System.Net.Dns.GetHostName, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase) Then Return True
                If srv.Equals(System.Environment.MachineName, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase) Then Return True
            Next
            Return False
        End If

        If excludeServersSpecified Then
            For Each srv In ExcludeServerNames
                If srv.Equals(System.Net.Dns.GetHostName, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase) Then Return False
                If srv.Equals(System.Environment.MachineName, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase) Then Return False
            Next
            Return True
        End If

        Return True

    End Function

    Private Function RequestedInstallDateTime() As DateTime

        Try
            Dim CCNetInfo = GetInfoFromCCNetStateFile(_cruiseInstallProjectStateFile)
            Dim LastSucessFullLabel = CCNetInfo.LastSucessFullLabel

            Dim projectVersion As Version
            If String.IsNullOrEmpty(LastSucessFullLabel) OrElse String.Equals("unknown", LastSucessFullLabel, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase) Then
                projectVersion = New Version(0, 0)
            Else
                projectVersion = New Version(LastSucessFullLabel)
            End If

            'specific company code to get the data from the config, can not post this :-(
            'dummy code folows
            Dim progInfo = _serverConfig.GetInfo(CheckInstallationNeededForProgramToInstall)
            'end dummy code

            If projectVersion < progInfo.WantedVersion Then
                If progInfo.WantedFrom.Date < Now.Date Then
                     'should the server be down for some time or so
                    _requestedInstallDate = Now.Date.AddHours(availableApplication.WantedFrom.Hour).AddMinutes(availableApplication.WantedFrom.Minute)
                Else
                    _requestedInstallDate = progInfo.WantedFrom
                End If

                If _integrationDone Then
                    'if installation failed, re-schedule it for the next day at the same time, giving us a day to investigate,
                    'otherwise try again for temporary errors
                    If Not CCNetInfo.IsSuccesfull Then _requestedInstallDate = _requestedInstallDate.AddDays(1)

                    _integrationDone = False
                End If
            Else
                _requestedInstallDate = DateTime.MaxValue
            End If

        Catch ex As Exception
            'on error, just set it to not scheduled
            _requestedInstallDate = DateTime.MaxValue
            Dim ei = String.Format("Error in RequestedInstallDateTime : {0} ", ex.ToString)
            ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Core.Util.Log.Error(ei)
            EventLog.WriteEntry("CCNet-InstallTrigger", ei, EventLogEntryType.Error)
        End Try

        Return _requestedInstallDate

    End Function

    Private Function GetInfoFromCCNetStateFile(cruiseProjectStateFile As String) As StateFileInfo

        Dim result As New StateFileInfo

        Try
            If IO.File.Exists(cruiseProjectStateFile) Then
                Dim stateFileContents As String = IO.File.ReadAllText(cruiseProjectStateFile)

                Dim xdoc As New Xml.XmlDocument
                xdoc.LoadXml(stateFileContents)

                result.LastSucessFullLabel = xdoc.SelectSingleNode("IntegrationResult/LastSuccessfulIntegrationLabel").InnerText

                Dim LastIntegrationStatus = xdoc.SelectSingleNode("IntegrationResult/Status").InnerText

                result.IsSuccesfull = LastIntegrationStatus = "Success"
            End If
        Catch ex As Exception
            EventLog.WriteEntry("CCNet-InstallTrigger", "Error reading state file of project : " + cruiseProjectStateFile + ex.ToString, EventLogEntryType.Error)
        End Try

        Return result
    End Function

    Private Function isDeploySettingsFileIsUpdated() As Boolean

        If DateTime.UtcNow.Subtract(_UpdateDeploySettingsProjectLastTimeChecked).TotalSeconds > 5 Then
            'check the state file every X seconds

            Dim news = GetInfoFromCCNetStateFile(_updateDeploySettingsStateFile)
            _UpdateDeploySettingsProjectLastTimeChecked = DateTime.UtcNow

            If _UpdateDeploySettingsVersion <> news.LastSucessFullLabel Then
                _UpdateDeploySettingsVersion = news.LastSucessFullLabel
                Return True
            End If
        End If

        Return False
    End Function

    Private Sub FirstTimeInitialize()
        _cruiseInstallProjectStateFile = IO.Path.Combine(New IO.FileInfo(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly.Location).DirectoryName, CruiseInstallProject + ".state")
        _updateDeploySettingsStateFile = IO.Path.Combine(New IO.FileInfo(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly.Location).DirectoryName, _UpdateDeploySettingsProject + ".state")
        _UpdateDeploySettingsVersion = GetInfoFromCCNetStateFile(_updateDeploySettingsStateFile).LastSucessFullLabel
        _UpdateDeploySettingsProjectLastTimeChecked = DateTime.UtcNow

        _ServerNameIsOk = ServerNameIsOk()
    End Sub

    Private Class StateFileInfo
        Public Property LastSucessFullLabel As String
        Public IsSuccesfull As Boolean
    End Class

End Class

Tuning CCNet to your whishes : a new trigger

2011-04-04T18:42:00.012+02:00

There was a request on the user list to run a nightly "publish" build, which takes the output of the other "child" projects and copies them to a new output directory. Since the output is quite large (> 1 GB), this should only be done each night if something changed in any of the other projects, but only if all of them have run successfully.
You can read the full details also on Stack overflow. Now one should be able to do this using the existing functionality, but that is not the case :-(. The reason is mainly that CCNet has grown from a simple CI server to a more feature rich one over the years, but here and there are still leftovers from the beginning, read the simple CI server. Triggers are just events that occur, and do not know a state, there is the project trigger, but that is more of a fire and forget one. So restarting a server poses a problem, combining multiple project triggers into one trigger poses a problem with timings over a day and so on.

To handle this situation, the only option is to write some code that does it. Thankfully CCNet has a plugin architecture that works quite well, see my previous creating a plugin about it for more details.

As an example of this request, I will create a new trigger, because this will be the fastest way to get a result with just a few lines of code adjustments needed. For starters I just copied the code of the existing schedule trigger into a new class, named ScheduleTriggerExtended.

Changes done :
° added property SubProjectsToWatch
The project names of the child projects to watch. For simplicity only the project name, meaning that it has to be on the same build server and has browse rights (or no security setup)
° added property ServerUri
the uri of the ccnet server, example : tcp://localhost:21234/CruiseServerClient.rem
° added property SubProjectsSavePath
A path reachable by the CCNet server (preferably local). This is used to store the timestamps of the subprojects. So we can check if the timestamp changed between the integration of a subproject and the build of the involved subproject.
° updated public IntegrationRequest Fire
Whenever the scheduled time is reached, also check if the subProjects are changed, by comparing the current last build times with the saved ones.
° updated public void IntegrationCompleted
Save the new buildtimes of the subprojects to the SubProjectsSavePath for later reference.

When reading this all over, the best approach would be to create a 'CCNet source control', that can scan other CCNet projects for changes, and filter them according to some filters (state, build time, ...)

Anyway, below is the trigger class, all changes are highlighted with comment : added code. Copy entire source into an assembly with name something like : CCNet.whatever.plugin
Example : CCNet.RuWi.plugin
And set references to NetReflector.dll, ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Core.dll, ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Remote.dll

A config is also provided below the code.

using System;
using System.Globalization;
using Exortech.NetReflector;
using ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Core.Config;
using ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Core.Util;
using ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Remote;


namespace ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Core.Triggers
{

    [ReflectorType("scheduleTriggerExtended")]
    public class ScheduleTriggerExtended : ITrigger, IConfigurationValidation
    {
        private string name;
        private DateTimeProvider dtProvider;
        private TimeSpan integrationTime;
        private DateTime nextBuild;
        private bool triggered;
        private Int32 randomOffSetInMinutesFromTime/* = 0*/;
        Random randomizer = new Random();

        /// <summary>
        /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="ScheduleTrigger"/> class.
        /// </summary>
        public ScheduleTriggerExtended()
            : this(new DateTimeProvider())
        {
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="ScheduleTrigger"/> class.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="dtProvider">The dt provider.</param>
        public ScheduleTriggerExtended(DateTimeProvider dtProvider)
        {
            this.dtProvider = dtProvider;
            this.BuildCondition = BuildCondition.IfModificationExists;
            WeekDays = (DayOfWeek[])DayOfWeek.GetValues(typeof(DayOfWeek));
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// The time of day that the build should run at. The time should be specified in a locale-specific format (ie. H:mm am/pm is acceptable for US locales.)
        /// </summary>
        /// <version>1.0</version>
        /// <default>n/a</default>
        [ReflectorProperty("time")]
        public virtual string Time
        {
            get { return integrationTime.ToString(); }
            set
            {
                try
                {
                    integrationTime = TimeSpan.Parse(value);
                }
                catch (Exception ex)
                {
                    string msg = "Unable to parse daily schedule integration time: {0}.  The integration time should be specified in the format: {1}.";
                    throw new ConfigurationException(string.Format(CultureInfo.CurrentCulture, msg, value, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.ShortTimePattern), ex);
                }
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Adds a random amount of minutes between 0 and set value to the time. This is mainly meant for spreading the load of actions to a central server. 
        /// Value must be between 0 and 59.
        /// </summary>
        /// <version>1.4</version>
        /// <default>0</default>
        [ReflectorProperty("randomOffSetInMinutesFromTime", Required = false)]
        public int RandomOffSetInMinutesFromTime
        {
            get { return randomOffSetInMinutesFromTime; }
            set
            {
                randomOffSetInMinutesFromTime = value;
                if (randomOffSetInMinutesFromTime < 0 || randomOffSetInMinutesFromTime >= 60)
                    throw new ConfigurationException("randomOffSetInMinutesFromTime must be in the range 0 - 59");
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// The name of the trigger. This name is passed to external tools as a means to identify the trigger that requested the build.
        /// </summary>
        /// <version>1.1</version>
        /// <default>ScheduleTrigger</default>
        [ReflectorProperty("name", Required = false)]
        public string Name
        {
            get
            {
                if (name == null) name = GetType().Name;
                return name;
            }
            set { name = value; }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// The condition that should be used to launch the integration. By default, this value is <b>IfModificationExists</b>, meaning that an integration will
        /// only be triggered if modifications have been detected. Set this attribute to <b>ForceBuild</b> in order to ensure that a build should be launched 
        /// regardless of whether new modifications are detected. 
        /// </summary>
        /// <version>1.0</version>
        /// <default>IfModificationExists</default>
        [ReflectorProperty("buildCondition", Required = false)]
        public BuildCondition BuildCondition { get; set; }

        /// <summary>
        /// The week days on which the build should be run (eg. Monday, Tuesday). By default, all days of the week are set.
        /// </summary>
        /// <version>1.0</version>
        /// <default>Monday-Sunday</default>
        [ReflectorProperty("weekDays", Required = false)]
        public DayOfWeek[] WeekDays { get; set; }


        //added code

        /// <summary>
        /// The project names of the child projects to watch. For cimplicity only the project name, 
        /// meaning that it has to be on the same build server and  has browse rights (or no security setup)
        /// </summary>
        [ReflectorArray("subProjectsToWatch", Required = true)]
        public string[] SubProjectsToWatch { get; set; }


        /// <summary>
        /// the uri of the ccnet server, example : tcp://localhost:21234/CruiseServerClient.rem
        /// </summary>
        [ReflectorProperty("serverUri", Required = true)]
        public string ServerUri { get; set; }



        /// <summary>
        /// A path reachable by the CCNet server (preferably local). This is used to store the timestamps of the subprojects.
        /// So we can check if the timestamp changed between the integration of a subproject and the build of the involved subproject.
        /// </summary>
        [ReflectorProperty("subProjectsSavePath", Required = true)]
        public string SubProjectsSavePath { get; set; }


        /// <summary>
        /// Looks at the timestamp saved in the reference file of the subprojects. If that timestamp differs from the last
        /// integration timestamp of the subproject, a re-build is needed.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns></returns>
        private bool SubProjectsAreChanged()
        {
            // nothing to watch
            if (SubProjectsToWatch == null || SubProjectsToWatch.Length == 0) return false;

            //the save path does not exist, so we must do the first build
            if (!System.IO.Directory.Exists(SubProjectsSavePath)) return true;

            //get the last build info from the build server
            var cm = new RemoteCruiseManagerFactory().GetCruiseManager(ServerUri);

            var buildInfos = cm.GetCruiseServerSnapshot().ProjectStatuses;
            

            foreach (string subprojectName in SubProjectsToWatch)
            {
                string locationOnDisk = System.IO.Path.Combine(SubProjectsSavePath, subprojectName);

                if (! System.IO.File.Exists(locationOnDisk)) return true;
                
                DateTime LastTimeBuildInIntegration;

                string data = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(locationOnDisk);

                if (DateTime.TryParse(data, out LastTimeBuildInIntegration))
                {
                    var lastbuildinfo = GetSubProjectLastBuildInfo(subprojectName, buildInfos);

                    if (lastbuildinfo.BuildStatus != IntegrationStatus.Success) return false;

                    if (LastTimeBuildInIntegration < lastbuildinfo.LastBuildDate ) return true;
                }
                else
                {
                    // file is empty, the contents is not a date, is corrupted, ....
                    throw new Exception(string.Format("Contents of {0}  --{1}-- is not convertable to a datetime", locationOnDisk,data));
                }
            }

            return false;
        }

        private Remote.ProjectStatus GetSubProjectLastBuildInfo(string projectName, Remote.ProjectStatus[] serverInfo)
        {
            foreach (ProjectStatus ps in serverInfo)
            {
                if (ps.Name == projectName) return ps;
            }

            throw new Exception(string.Format("Project {0} not found on server with uri {1}", projectName, ServerUri));
        }


        private void SaveSubProjectsLastBuildTimes()
        {
            // nothing to watch
            if (SubProjectsToWatch == null || SubProjectsToWatch.Length == 0) return ;
            
            if (!System.IO.Directory.Exists(SubProjectsSavePath)) System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(SubProjectsSavePath);

            DateTime now = dtProvider.Now;

            foreach (string subprojectName in SubProjectsToWatch)
            {
                string locationOnDisk = System.IO.Path.Combine(SubProjectsSavePath, subprojectName);

                System.IO.File.WriteAllText(locationOnDisk, now.ToLongDateString());
            }
        }

        //end added code


        private void SetNextIntegrationDateTime()
        {

            if (integrationTime.Minutes + RandomOffSetInMinutesFromTime >= 60)
                throw new ConfigurationException(string.Format(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture, "Scheduled time {0}:{1} + randomOffSetInMinutesFromTime {2} would exceed the hour, this is not allowed", integrationTime.Hours, integrationTime.Minutes, RandomOffSetInMinutesFromTime));

            DateTime now = dtProvider.Now;
            nextBuild = new DateTime(now.Year, now.Month, now.Day, integrationTime.Hours, integrationTime.Minutes, 0, 0);

            if (randomOffSetInMinutesFromTime > 0)
            {
                Int32 randomNumber = randomizer.Next(randomOffSetInMinutesFromTime);
                nextBuild = nextBuild.AddMinutes(randomNumber);
            }

            if (now >= nextBuild)
            {
                nextBuild = nextBuild.AddDays(1);
            }

            nextBuild = CalculateNextIntegrationTime(nextBuild);
        }

        private DateTime CalculateNextIntegrationTime(DateTime nextIntegration)
        {
            while (true)
            {
                if (IsValidWeekDay(nextIntegration.DayOfWeek))
                    break;
                nextIntegration = nextIntegration.AddDays(1);
            }
            return nextIntegration;
        }

        private bool IsValidWeekDay(DayOfWeek nextIntegrationDay)
        {
            return Array.IndexOf(WeekDays, nextIntegrationDay) >= 0;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Integrations the completed. 
        /// </summary>
        /// <remarks></remarks>
        public virtual void IntegrationCompleted()
        {
            if (triggered)
            {
                // added code
                SaveSubProjectsLastBuildTimes();
                // added code
                SetNextIntegrationDateTime();
            }
            triggered = false;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the next build. 
        /// </summary>
        /// <value></value>
        /// <remarks></remarks>
        public DateTime NextBuild
        {
            get
            {
                if (nextBuild == DateTime.MinValue)
                {
                    SetNextIntegrationDateTime();
                }
                return nextBuild;
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Fires this instance. 
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns></returns>
        /// <remarks></remarks>
        public IntegrationRequest Fire()
        {
            DateTime now = dtProvider.Now;

            //added code
            //if (now > NextBuild && IsValidWeekDay(now.DayOfWeek))
            if (now > NextBuild && IsValidWeekDay(now.DayOfWeek) && SubProjectsAreChanged())
            // end added code
            {
                triggered = true;

                return new IntegrationRequest(BuildCondition, Name, null);
            }
            return null;
        }


        void IConfigurationValidation.Validate(IConfiguration configuration, ConfigurationTrace parent, IConfigurationErrorProcesser errorProcesser)
        {
            string projectName = "(Unknown)";

            var project = parent.GetAncestorValue<Project>();
            if (project != null)
            {
                projectName = project.Name;
            }

            if (integrationTime.Minutes + RandomOffSetInMinutesFromTime >= 60)
            {
                errorProcesser.ProcessError("Scheduled time {0}:{1} + randomOffSetInMinutesFromTime {2} would exceed the hour, this is not allowed. Conflicting project {3}", integrationTime.Hours, integrationTime.Minutes, RandomOffSetInMinutesFromTime, projectName);
            }
        }

    }
}

Example Config

<cruisecontrol xmlns:cb="urn:ccnet.config.builder">

  <project name="Child1" >
    <artifactDirectory>D:\temp\Integration\Child1</artifactDirectory>
    <workingDirectory>D:\temp\Integration\Child1</workingDirectory>

    <triggers />
    <tasks >
      <nullTask/>
    </tasks>

    <publishers>
      <xmllogger />      
    </publishers>
    
  </project>

  <project name="Child2" >
    <artifactDirectory>D:\temp\Integration\Child2</artifactDirectory>
    <workingDirectory>D:\temp\Integration\Child2</workingDirectory>

    <triggers />
    <tasks >
      <nullTask/>
    </tasks>

    <publishers>
      <xmllogger />      
    </publishers>
    
  </project>

  <project name="Child3" >
    <artifactDirectory>D:\temp\Integration\Child3</artifactDirectory>
    <workingDirectory>D:\temp\Integration\Child3</workingDirectory>

    <triggers />
    <tasks >
      <nullTask/>
    </tasks>

    <publishers>
      <xmllogger />      
    </publishers>
    
  </project>

  
  <project name="Integrator" >
    <artifactDirectory>D:\temp\Integration\Intgrator</artifactDirectory>
    <workingDirectory>D:\temp\Integration\Integrator</workingDirectory>

    <triggers>
      <scheduleTriggerExtended 
            time="14:08" 
            buildCondition="IfModificationExists" 
            name="Scheduled"
            serverUri="tcp://localhost:21234/CruiseServerClient.rem"
            subProjectsSavePath="d:\temp">
            
            <subProjectsToWatch>
                <name>Child1</name>
                <name>Child3</name>
            </subProjectsToWatch>
            
            <weekDays>
                <weekDay>Saturday</weekDay>
            </weekDays>

      </scheduleTriggerExtended>
    </triggers>    
    
    <tasks >
      <nullTask/>
    </tasks>

    <publishers>
      <xmllogger />      
    </publishers>
    
  </project>

  </cruisecontrol>

Cradiator : WPF frontend for CCNet

2011-02-21T21:26:00.005+01:00

I've been working on improving my WPF skills, and what's better than making a WPF front-end for CCNet? Good thing is that this already exists : Cradiator.

I've made a fork on github, so that PandaWood (the maintainer of Cradiator) can pull in my changes as he wants. Since this is my first encounter with Git, I must admit that it takes some getting used to, but it works like a charm.

You can find my fork here.

I've made the following updates :
° added a server-regex, to filter on (build)server name
° added a name on the view
° shows the amount of projects fetched from the URL
° option 'Show only broken'
° option 'Show server name'
° option 'Show out of date' projects

A bit of explanation on the new options :

Show Only Broken

This shows only the broken projects according to selection (project name, category name, server name). If no broken projects are found a smiley and the view name are shown, so you know which view is ok.

Show Server Name

This just shows the server name below the projectname. Comes in handy when you have projects with the same name on different build servers. (Compile on Windows and on Linux for example)

Show Out Of Date

This shows the projects that are outside of an allowed time difference in minutes. The highest LatestBuildTime of all projects is taken. This comes in handy when you have projects(mostly on different build servers) that should do an action at a certain time. This option allows to show the projects which did not build, regardless if they are broken or not. For example the windows build machine was down from 20:00 to 23:00 hours, but we had a FullBuild defined at 22:00.
Now Cradiator shows that the FullBuild on the windows server did not take place.

I use this for some time at work, and it is great. This makes it a lot easier to keep an eye on all the installations I do with CCNet. Remember 80+ servers with each about 30 projects, this makes 2400 projects to watch, so some filtering is needed.

If you get the code and build it, you can see all the new options in action, I update the debugProjects file to show them without needing to point your buildserver.

Suggestions or remarks are welcome

WPF : a new strategy

2011-01-09T11:05:00.007+01:00

So I gave up WPF a year ago, and went back to the basic business programming :-) Even at work I do not do any WPF anymore.
This was very successful, but now I got a problem : business programming is all done and fast, but the WPF side still needs work. Having a bad feeling, I started learning WPF, again.. .

But for some reason I stumbled on a great resource, I did not find a year ago : WPF MVVM Video by Jason Dolinger. Now I find this a must see video for anyone starting WPF or MVVM! It is 1 hour, but it tackles almost everything for WPF - MVVM programming. No fancy UI stuff, but data handling! It is a simple application, but Jason takes it through an entire re-factoring cycle :
° starting the win-form way (like most people tend to do when first doing WPF)
° introducing a basic view-model
° a view-model with commands
° adding tests to the view-model
° introducing unity
° ...

This resource really helped me a lot more than the other stuff I found in the past. And now I can search for more specific items if it needs be, since I now know how WPF data handling works. Jason just uses the basic WPF stuff, not 3rd party libs like prism or so, giving you an idea of to start from scratch and what benefits certain frameworks can provide.

Since we're a VB.Net shop, I converted the example to VB.Net what also took a lot of time and effort. There are items in C# that do not have a VB.Net counterpart, or are named differently, for example the yield operator. I only converted the WPF application to VB.Net, and not the dataprovider project, as this is not touched in the video at all. Every big part in the video has its own subfolder and solution, so you can easily see what is changed in what part. I hope you find this conversion useful.

Another reason I looked again at WPF is CCNet vNext, I'm playing with the idea to make the new cctray in wpf, this will give it a new, modern look. And with a bit of luck, we can make the dashbord in silverlight, so we should be able to use the same view-models for cctray and the dashboard!

The source of Jasons video and the VB.net conversion.

Continous Installation : going beyond the I of installation

2010-12-26T17:27:00.002+01:00

The installation of software towards our customers goes very smooth :-) I've set this system up about 2 years ago, and it is a very appreciated part in our company. Hundreds of installations done.
From the start on I extended the functionality beyond the basic installation part, from day 1 actually, but I never wrote about it yet. I also collected some data of those servers : firstly just the application event log. The idea was to send us the error logs, so we were informed if a customer called. And we can do statistics on these errors. What application throws the most errors, are these technical, validation, communication, ... related and so on. Very usefull information.
Later on, I extended it even more to watch the server itself, CPU usage, hard disk usage and even SQL Server information : backup ok, size of database, size of tables, ...
All this info is send to our central SQL server for analysis in the same way as the rest : via the FTP site. This also proved very usefull since we discovered hard disk failures and bad memory modules before they could do serious damage !

But now a new challenge appeared : Hyper-V

Our next servers are more powerfull and we want to reduce the amount of time we need when we have to replace one. The answer is Hyper-V.
These servers are loaded with Hyper-V Core, and above that we will host 1 or more virtual servers. If the hardware needs updating, we can just put in a bigger server with Hyper-V Core on it, move the virtual servers on to it, and we're done. All settings are kept as the were before the move : Big Advantage !!

The catch : we also need to watch the Hyper-V machine itself as we do the current servers. System team looked around for Hyper-V remote stuff, but could not find anything (payable). When I heard of this, I said :
Just use CCNet :-D We use it on all of our other servers and it works, so why not on a Hyper-V one?

And it worked indeed, Hyper-V Core comes with .Net framework 2.O loaded, and that's all I need. To be on the safe side I use the same (very old) version of CCNet as we do on the other servers : 1.4.2 (yikes indeed very old).
But we only use the exec task and the basic triggers, so it is all we need.
just copy the CCNet setup exe on it via a share, run it through a command prompt, and CCNet is installed. Could not be easier !
Now we can monitor and maintain the Hyper-V servers the same as the other ones.

Continous Installation : Forcing multiple builds at once

2010-08-05T20:23:00.006+02:00

It's been about 2 years since I've set up CCNet for Continuous Installation at work, and it works like a charm. Programs we install with CCNet are at time of writing :

Click Once (click for more info)
Windows services
Wcf Services
Ms SQL Reporting Services (click for more info)

Off course some programs also require a database, so the database updating is also done as a part of the installation :-).

But now another need has surfaced : Program Dependencies.
We make software for the local government (City hall level), but this is all kinds of software : finance, registry of births, deaths and marriages, construction requests and so on. What we do NOT want is that multiple programs need to handle the state of a person (married, divorced, ...). There is 1 program that handles this kind of stuff, and others can interface with it. For the moment these interfaces are done via WCF services. So there is no 'real' reference like with a function library, but more like with an interface library. And so far this works great.

For example when a new version of lets say Bookkeeping is needed, I may also need to install or update PeopleManagement, because of the new dependency between Bookkeeping and PeopleManagement. Now as long as it is only 1 dependency, I could just schedule them after each other, but there are programs with 5 or more dependencies :-(
And doing it by hand also means that I (or a collegue) may forget to update a dependency, which is not good.

There is the ForceBuild Publisher, but this has a big problem, it just launches the projects with the Fire and Forget strategy. Meaning that I do not have control of the exact order of execution, I have no control what to do when a dependency fails, ...

Luckily the code of that publisher is a good starting point, the only things I need to add is to wait for the outcome, before returning control to CCNet-core and foresee a property to fail the task if the forced build failed.

The current code of the ForceBuild is as follows :

public void Run(IIntegrationResult result)
{
 if (IntegrationStatus != result.Status) return;
 factory.GetCruiseManager(ServerUri).ForceBuild(Project, BuildForcerName);
}

With the adjustments, the code is :

public void Run(IIntegrationResult result)
{
 //get cruisemanager
 var cm = factory.GetCruiseManager(ServerUri);
 var cpi = GetCurrentProjectInfo(cm);

 //get last known build date of project to be forced
 var lastBuildDate = cpi.LastBuildDate;
 var compareBuildDate = lastBuildDate;

 //force build of wanted project
 cm.ForceBuild(ProjectName, buildForcerName);

 //keep waiting until build is done
 while (lastBuildDate.Equals(compareBuildDate))
 {
  System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(500);
  cpi = GetCurrentProjectInfo(cm);
  compareBuildDate = cpi.LastBuildDate;
 }

 if (FailIfForceBuildFaled && cpi.BuildStatus != IntegrationStatus.Success)
 {
  throw new CruiseControlException("Force Build Failed of : " + ProjectName);
 }
}

private ProjectStatus GetCurrentProjectInfo(ICruiseManager cm)
{
 var previousBuildInfos = cm.GetCruiseServerSnapshot();
 ProjectStatus result = null;

 foreach (ProjectStatus ps in previousBuildInfos.ProjectStatuses)
 {
  if (ps.Name == ProjectName)
  {
   result = ps;
   continue;
  }
 }

 return result;
}

Not much change in code, but a very great increase in the ease of installing our software. Now I just schedule this project, iso many others :-)

back in action

2010-07-19T12:21:00.003+02:00

It's been a very long time since I made a post, due to various reasons. My work got all my time due to a project that went bad :-( This is now solved, so meaning more time for CCNet now : Yeah !
I do need to catch up, so give me some time. There is a second release planned of the 1.5 version which should fix some annoying bugs. ETA should be in 1 to 2 weeks. As for the 1.6 release, this will probably be around October or so, depending on the amount of new items.

I did make a small new addition to the 1.6 code base: a Cron Trigger.
For the people working with a Unix system, this sounds familiar, for those not knowing, it is a time-based job scheduler. Cron enables users to schedule jobs (commands or shell scripts) to run periodically at certain times or dates. It is commonly used to automate system maintenance or administration.

Because the Cron syntax is very simple it is also very powerfull. Scheduling something every tuesday every 10 minutes between 15 and 16 hours, but only in the weekends is very easy.
You can see the documentation at Cron Trigger
All the hard work was already done, there is a project NCrontab so it was just adding the code, very easy.

Next items will be crawling through Jira, and fixing open issues, so that will keep me busy for some time.

Continuous Installation and MS SQL Reporting Services

2010-04-13T21:06:00.004+02:00

A few weeks ago, I was informed that we also will use MS SQL Reporting Services in our programs for the reporting. Now I was used to Crystal Reports, which are easy to deploy because they are compiled into the assembly. But fust for making things more complicated, the company decided to use MS SQL Reporting Services.
From deployment point of view, this is a pain !
The reason : there is no real deployment strategy for seen by MS (as far as I could find out). There are 3 options :
° distribute via the publish in Visual Studio
° use the SOAP interface exposed by MS SQL Reporting Services
° there is an rs.exe, but the usage is just medieval.

Option 1
NO GO, not for 75+ servers !
this requires direct access to all of the servers, can not be sheduled, would be difficult with the current version setup we have, ....

Option 2
This would mean writing a program for communicating with the soap interface, plus its errorhandling, and more important : the data (reports and the like) must still be supplied somehow

Option 3
This seemed the best way to start, and it turned out to be so. The rs.exe is indeed medieval, but there is a nice UI : RSScripter.
RSSCripter makes a batch file that calls rs.exe with all the needed arguments (neat), and exports all wanted items into a folder structure.

So I went for option 3, the approach is as follows :
1) our reporting guy creates the various reports (yes we have a real reporting guru)
2) when he thinks if all are some reports are ok, he uses the RSScripter to export all needed items (reports, datasources, folders, ...)
3) he places this in a dedicated folder in source control, each 'version' is a subfolder of this dedicated folder.
4) he presses 'force build' on the 'make package' project, which just zips the folder

and now I have a package I can deploy :-)

For the deployment itself, there are still some small steps needed though :
° adjust the batch file
a) update the log file location
b) update the scriptlocation
c) update the target reportserver
° adjust some rss files (report and datasource files)
a) update any connection strings
b) update user and password
c) update the source location

when all this is done, I just call the updated batch file.

Nice and easy

WPF : Using the designer with design time data

2010-01-31T17:22:00.011+01:00

Back on the WPF track. Since it is really needed at my company, I re-started (again). But I finally have some good news :-). Before, I wrote all the WPF programs with 'NotePad'. Not really NotePad, I did use VS2008, but without the designer.
The designer does not work with the programs at work! and I thought : yup another glitch in WPF....

So I started wondering why this would be, and started from scratch.
° add a screen : designer works
° add a listbox : designer still works
° bind the listbox itemsource to values (via a dataprovider) : designer works
° retrieve the data from a database via wcf service via company framework: designer does NOT work ????

Meaning it had to be something with the WCF service or the company framework, but since the program does work in runtime, this would be hard to pinpoint(maybe due to the security - login). So I tried another approach : The basic idea is that I want to make a screen, and preferably with some dummy data so I can use the designer. This data does not have to be data from the database.

Conclusion : in design time the dataprovider may retrieve dummy data, in runtime it has to go via the wcf service to the database.
And there may not be any code changes required after the design is done. Otherwise there is a risk of showing dummy data in a production environment!

Solution : different dataproviders.
In the old way of working I had 1 dataprovider class, mostly called DataProvider
Now I split this up into 3 classes and 1 interface :
° DataProvider : the one the xaml file(s) bind to like before.
° DataProviderDesignTime : this one provides dummy data
° DataProviderRunTime : this one goes via the wcf service to the database
° IDataProvider : holds all the methods of the various dataproviders

Way of working :
° Dataprovider has a private variable of type IDataprovider, initialised to DataProviderDesignTime.
° At runtime, one of my first commands is to change this IDataprovider in the Dataprovider class from design-time to run-time, via a shared function called SetRuntimeDataprovider

Now this saves me a lot of time : I can finally use the designer !!
And even the effect of convertes can be shown now, cool.

The code


<Window x:Class="WpfApplication8.Window1"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:lc="clr-namespace:WpfApplication8"
    Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300">
    <Window.Resources>
        <ObjectDataProvider x:Key="ListAllPersons"
                            ObjectType="{x:Type lc:DataProvider}"
                            MethodName="ListAllPersons"                            
         />

        <DataTemplate x:Key="PersonTemplate" >
            <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
                <Label Content="{Binding Name}"   />
                <Label Content="{Binding Age}"   />
            </StackPanel>
        </DataTemplate>
    </Window.Resources>
    <StackPanel>
        <ListBox  ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource ListAllPersons}}" 
                  ItemTemplate="{StaticResource PersonTemplate}" >
        </ListBox>
    </StackPanel>
</Window>

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace WpfApplication8
{
    public class DataProvider
    {
        private static IDataprovider dp = new DataProviderDesignTime();

        public static List<Person> ListAllPersons()
        {
            return dp.ListAllPersons();
        }

        public static void SetRuntimeDataprovider()
        {
            dp = new DataProviderRunTime();
        }
    }
}

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace WpfApplication8
{
    interface IDataprovider
    {
        List<Person> ListAllPersons();
    }
}

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace WpfApplication8
{
    class DataProviderDesignTime : IDataprovider
    {
        public List<Person> ListAllPersons()
        {
            List<Person> result = new List<Person>();
            for (int i = 1; i < 10; i++)
            {
                result.Add(new Person { Name = "Clone " + i.ToString(), Age = i });
            }
            return result;
        }
    }
}

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace WpfApplication8
{
    class DataProviderRunTime : IDataprovider
    {
        public List<Person> ListAllPersons()
        {
            // get the data 
        }
    }
}

Working with the 1.5 code base : part 5

2009-10-18T20:23:00.004+02:00

Away with the dreaded WPF, and back to good old CCNet coding ;-)
This part will cover another updated part of the code : communication. In 1.5 Craig introduced messaging, Changing to Messages. As always Craigs blog is very informative in what and why he changes. I'll try to give a more hands-on example, so others can see more details and some code.
The problem : In CCNet 1.4.3 I exposed the breakers of a build to cctray and the dashboard. Cradiator also uses this information. Now in CCNet 1.5 Craig, yes he again, exposed also the breaking tasks, which is good. But this introduced a problem : the xml feed Cradiator uses, only exposes the last message! So this means that we show the breaker, OR the breaking tasks. (also the dashboard has this problem for the moment)
The solution is simple : expose all messages :-) This is covered in Jira Issue 1718
Anyway, this kind of information is stored in the messages arraylist on the project being integrated. When a build is ok, we clear this list, when a build is bad, we look at the modifications, and extract the user names. The same goes for the tasks that failed. All this information is just a message in this arraylist. This also is a problem on its own. A message is just a text : John Wayne Broke the build. You can not see what kind of information it is, only by parsing the text :-(

Fixing the issue :

Step 1 : add a type for each message

Currently I have these 4 types in an enum

NotDefined
Breakers
Fixer
FailingTasks

This is just adding a property with the enum to the message class


/// <summary>
/// The type of message
/// </summary>
[XmlText]
public MessageKind Kind
{
    get { return messageKind; }
    set { messageKind = value; }
}

Step 2 : adjusting the communication

We need to update the MessageRequest to have this new property also


/// <summary>
/// The kind of message
/// </summary>
[XmlElement("kind")]
public Message.MessageKind Kind
{
 get { return kind; }
 set { kind = value; }
}

Everywhere where we go from a MessageRequest to a Message we need to pass this new property value. This is in 1 place : CruiseServer.cs in public virtual Response SendMessage(MessageRequest request)
The only thing left to do is specify the value of the type when we add a message to the list. For CCTray this is the option :Volunteer to fix build, in the integration itself, we must add the correct value to the breakers and the failing tasks.

Step 3 : expose the messagelist

This is merely adding a new xml element, which is a list, nothing special.
So in XmlReportAction.cs add this element :

xmlWriter.WriteStartElement("messages");

foreach (Message m in status.Messages)
{
    xmlWriter.WriteStartElement("message");
    xmlWriter.WriteAttributeString("text", m.Text);
    xmlWriter.WriteAttributeString("kind", m.Kind.ToString());
    xmlWriter.WriteEndElement();
}

xmlWriter.WriteEndElement();

Not so hard was it ?

Stay tuned for more in the future ...

Wpf : Final encounter

2009-10-15T19:52:00.003+02:00

I tried to enhance the display so that issues with attachments would have an icon (paperclip) next to it. To show and hide this image is easy, just use a converter. But getting the image to use an embedded resource was more difficult. For me this was the last drop.
I quit this WPF stuff for the moment, maybe I take it up again later, when the tools are more to todays standard, but from what I heard about VS2010, I doubt that it will be in the near future. Anyone who wants to take a look at the code, you can find the project at : Source Forge project
svn repository : https://jirawpf.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/jirawpf

maybe it needs some more comments, but you should get it to work.
If there are questions about the project itself, feel free to ask, I'll try to answer them.

Back to CCNet, that is a project I've neglected a bit, and needs some attention.

Wpf : style issues

2009-10-02T20:50:00.003+02:00

Got the program almost like I want it. Encountered another big annoying WPF issue :
the order of the styles and datatemplates in a XAML file is of importance !
Take a look at the following example :

<DataTemplate x:Key="IssueDataTemplate" >
  <ContentControl Style="{StaticResource IssueTemplate}"/>
</DataTemplate >

<Style x:Key="IssueTemplate" >
  <Setter Property="Control.Template">
    <Setter.Value>
       <ControlTemplate>
          <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" >
            <Label Content="{Binding Key}" Width="200"/>
            <Label Content="{Binding Description}" />
          </StackPanel>
       </ControlTemplate>
     </Setter.Value>
  </Setter>
</Style>

You get a freaking runtime error : Unable to find style IssueTemplate ! ! !

To fix it, place the style first in the file, and next the datatemplate.

Questions :
1) Why does it throw a runtime error, and not a compile error, it is a static resource, meaning that it is known at design time, it is not loaded via an assembly at runtime (late binding technology).
2) Why an error in the first place? Back in 1990, it was of importance to place the procedures in correct order in the code, so the compiler could find them. But we're now in 2009! This is the way of working of 20 years ago!

When you code in any .Net language, Delphi, C, VB6, VB5, VB4 or even COBOL the place of a function in a class does not matter, hey even with partial classes, it does not even matter in which file they are! But WPF fails if the order is not ok.

I have a feeling that this issue will make the style files unorganized, and so making it errorprone :-(

sigh me wonder what is so fun and exciting about wpf, can someone enlighten me ? I do not grasp it.

Getting it to work

2009-10-02T12:35:00.002+02:00

Found the courage again to code in this WPF world.
Reverted to use the ItemTemplate in the listbox, to get it to work. But now I have double XAML code : a datatemplate showing how a certain item is displayed, and a style showing how a certain item is displayed. The solution for this is to let the datatemplate use the style, so the layout is only defined once, like so :

<Style x:Key="IssueTemplate" >
  <Setter Property="Control.Template">
    <Setter.Value>
 <ControlTemplate>
     <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" >
  <Label Content="{Binding Key}" Width="200"/>
  <Label Content="{Binding Description}" />
  <Label Content="{Binding Votes}" />
  <Label Content="{Binding Assignee}" />
  <Label Content="{Binding Created}" />
  <Label Content="{Binding Priority}" />
  <Label Content="{Binding Reporter}" />
  <Label Content="{Binding Status}" />
  <Label Content="{Binding Votes}" />
     </StackPanel>
 </ControlTemplate>
    </Setter.Value>
  </Setter>
</Style>

<DataTemplate x:Key="IssueDataTemplate" >
  <ContentControl Style="{StaticResource IssueTemplate}"/>
</DataTemplate >

The issue with the double click is not relevant anymore, I wanted to show a second window on double clicking an issue, but changed my mind. Now when you select an item in the listbox, the details of the selected issue are shown at the top of the screen. This is done by adding a ContentControl to the main window, binding its datacontext it to the same one as the listbox and setting the property IsSynchronizedWithCurrentItem to true. This works rather well. The code of the main window looks now like this :

<DockPanel>
    <Expander VerticalContentAlignment="Top" 
              DockPanel.Dock="Left"  
              DataContext="{StaticResource CCNetProject}" >
        <ContentControl Style="{StaticResource CCNetProjectTemplate}" />
    </Expander>
    <ContentControl DataContext="{StaticResource AllIssues}" 
                    Style="{StaticResource IssueDetailTemplate}" 
                    DockPanel.Dock="Top" />
    <ListBox  DockPanel.Dock="Bottom" 
              ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource AllIssues}}"  
              ItemTemplate="{StaticResource IssueDataTemplate}" 
              IsSynchronizedWithCurrentItem="True"                          
    />
</DockPanel>

As you can see, there is nothing in the main window about how a certain item is displayed, no coloring, borders, ... All this is done is in the styles. I'll see how far I get with this approach. I'm now busy with showing the details of a certain issue, when that is done the most important functionality of the program is done, making it possible to give the app a more polished look.
Stay tuned ...

Struggling with basic behaviour

2009-09-11T08:54:00.005+02:00

Ran into some problems again :-(.
1) If I populate the listbox with lot's of items, let's say 200, it falls of the screen!
In winforms I would expect a scrollbar to appear, but not in my WPF app :-(. So I added a Scrollviewer around the listbox, but to no avail.
After looking around on the net, it appears that the stackpanel is at fault, my Listbox resides in a StackPanel, and this combination makes the items of the listbox to go beyond the window edge.
Solution : remove the stackpanel, this was not realy needed (yet) for my program, and when I do need a container control in the future, I'll use a grid

2) Standard a listbox does not support double-click
Surfs up : listbox double click. You have to manually add the event.

3) When I use the ItemContainerStyle in stead of the ItemTemplate, like said in the previous post, the listbox looses the ability to select items somehow. Go figure. If there is a soul out there, that can explain me the difference between ItemContainerStyle and ItemTemplate, please enlighten me.

Now these are the kind of things that drive me nuts when I am programming in WPF !
When coming from Windows Forms, I keep on stumbling on these basic stuff that is natively in windows forms, but not in WPF, I think I'll join the WPF Hate team, and stick to console and winforms. At least those work, no eye candy, but I can say it'll be finished in 2 days.

I mean it is easy to create Star Wars like stuff in WPF, but real working apps, that remains to be seen. Ok, there are a lot of showcases to be found on the Net, but I wonder how many devs and designers where put on those projects. Also read this page

laying off for a while, getting too angry ...

Keeping the overview

2009-09-10T12:43:00.010+02:00

The main window is getting into shape, but I do not like the Xaml code :-(. It's getting big, and I'm loosing the overview. Below is a small example of what I mean, the window just shows the CCNet project data, (name, description, ...) and a list of the issues (key, description, votes, ..)

<Window x:Class="JiraWpf.Window2"
   xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
   xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
   xmlns:lc="clr-namespace:JiraWpf"
   Title="Window2" >
    <Window.Resources>
        <ObjectDataProvider x:Key="CCNetProject"
                           ObjectType="{x:Type lc:CCNetJiraDataProvider}"
                           MethodName="GetCCNetProject"
          />
        <ObjectDataProvider x:Key="AllProjects"
                           ObjectType="{x:Type lc:CCNetJiraDataProvider}"
                           MethodName="GetProjects"
          />
        <ObjectDataProvider x:Key="AllIssues"
                           ObjectType="{x:Type lc:CCNetJiraDataProvider}"
                           MethodName="GetIssuesFromFilter"
          />
        <DataTemplate x:Key="IssueTemplate" >
            <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" >
                <Label Content="{Binding Key}" Width="200"/>
                <Label Content="{Binding Description}" />
                <Label Content="{Binding Votes}" />
                <Label Content="{Binding Summary}" />
            </StackPanel>
        </DataTemplate>
    </Window.Resources>
    <StackPanel>
        <DockPanel>
            <Expander VerticalContentAlignment="Center" DockPanel.Dock="Left"  DataContext="{StaticResource CCNetProject}" >
                <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical" >
                    <Label Content="{Binding Lead}" />
                    <Label Content="{Binding Key}" />
                    <Label Content="{Binding Description}" />
                    <Label Content="{Binding Name}" />
                </StackPanel>
            </Expander>
            <ListBox DockPanel.Dock="Top" 
                    ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource AllIssues}}"  
                    ItemTemplate="{StaticResource IssueTemplate}"
                    />
        </DockPanel>
    </StackPanel>
</Window>

As you can see, that is getting big, and it shows almost nothing :-( Time to clean house!
First thing I do not like is the difference of showing data between the listbox and the expander. I prefer the one of the listbox, where you say that the items have the specified template, leaving the actual layout out of the overview.
Downside is that Expander does not have an ItemTemplate property, and creating that property and functionality on all kind of controls does not sound as an attractive solution. The good news is that does exist already, WPF has this functionality build in : you just have to use basic controls and styles !
Now that is what I like : basic controls. Never thought that I would ever say : I like something about WPF ;-)
So I created a style that just sets the Control.Template property, this allows to easily create a visualisation of a certain item, the way like the it is done with a DataTemplate. And this style is applied to a ContentControl residing in the expander. This is already better, but now I have a style and a datatemplate to visualise data, and personally I do not like 2 ways of doing the same stuff in 1 program. So I changed the DataTemplate also into a style. This means that I have to use the ItemContainerStyle property in stead of the ItemTemplate in the listbox.
That being done, the way of presentation is more consistent, but the file is still rather big. It would be nice if the resources where moved into a separate file, or set of files, and luckily this is also supported out of the box with the ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries. Resulting in the following for the window.xaml

<Window x:Class="JiraWpf.Window1"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:lc="clr-namespace:JiraWpf"
    Title="Window1" >
    <Window.Resources>
        <ResourceDictionary>
            <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
                <ResourceDictionary Source="Resources/DataProvider.xaml" />
                <ResourceDictionary Source="Resources/DataLayout.xaml" />
            </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
        </ResourceDictionary>
    </Window.Resources>
    <StackPanel>
        <DockPanel>
            <Expander VerticalContentAlignment="Center" DockPanel.Dock="Left"  DataContext="{StaticResource CCNetProject}" >
                <ContentControl Style="{StaticResource CCNetProjectTemplate}" />
            </Expander>
            
            <ListBox DockPanel.Dock="Top" 
                     ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource AllIssues}}"  
                     ItemContainerStyle="{StaticResource IssueTemplate}"
                     />
        </DockPanel>
    </StackPanel>
</Window>

As you can see, a lot shorter and more easily to follow. Below is the DataLayout.xaml file, I did not post the DataProvider.xaml file, because it is just a copy and paste of all the ObjectDataProviders into an empty ResourceDictionary file.

<ResourceDictionary xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
    <Style x:Key="CCNetProjectTemplate" >
        <Setter Property="Control.Template">
            <Setter.Value>
                <ControlTemplate>
                    <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical" >
                        <Label Content="{Binding Lead}" />
                        <Label Content="{Binding Key}" />
                        <Label Content="{Binding Description}" />
                        <Label Content="{Binding Name}" />
                    </StackPanel>
                </ControlTemplate>
            </Setter.Value>
        </Setter>
    </Style>
    
    <Style x:Key="IssueTemplate" >
        <Setter Property="Control.Template">
            <Setter.Value>
                <ControlTemplate>
                    <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" >
                        <Label Content="{Binding Key}" Width="200"/>
                        <Label Content="{Binding Description}" />
                        <Label Content="{Binding Votes}" />
                        <Label Content="{Binding Summary}" />
                    </StackPanel>
                </ControlTemplate>
            </Setter.Value>
        </Setter>
    </Style>
</ResourceDictionary>

Now this looks like it is more manageable. Stay tuned ...

Binding data with INotifyPropertyChanged

2009-09-07T13:24:00.007+02:00

Wpf can only bind to properties, and in order to let it automatically refresh the UI when a bound data item changes value, it must implement the INotifyPropertyChanged property.
This means that the following code does not suffice :

using System;
namespace JiraWpf.DataObjects
{
    public class Person
    {
        public Person()
        { 
        }
        public string Name { get; set; }
    }
}

So let's implement the interface, this leads us to the following :

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;

namespace JiraWpf.DataObjects
{
    public class Person : INotifyPropertyChanged
    {
        public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;

        public Person()
        { }

        private string name;
        public string Name
        {
            get { return name; }
            set         
            { 
                if (value != this.name)
                {
                    this.name = value;
                    OnPropertyChanged(new PropertyChangedEventArgs("Name"));
                }            
            }
        }

        private void OnPropertyChanged(PropertyChangedEventArgs args)
        {
            var handler = PropertyChanged;
            if (handler == null) return;
            handler(this, args);
        }
    }
}

Not a big change, but if you have a lot of properties, this is very bad. We came from a 1 line property implementation to a 13 line !! The lines for the event and raising it are common for all properties, so they are not counted. Every property compares its value with the previous value, and when those 2 are different it raise the change-event. This is functionality that is the same for all properties so it belongs somewhere else. It would be handy if an attribute NotifyOnChange could be set on a property, but this does not exist (as far as I know). Meaning this comparison must be done in a self made base class : NotifyingObject, leading us to the following :

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace JiraWpf.DataObjects
{
    public class NotifyingObject : INotifyPropertyChanged
    {
        private Dictionary<string, IComparable> props;

        public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;

        public NotifyingObject()
        {
            props = new Dictionary<string, IComparable>();
        }

        public void SetValue<T>(string name, T value) where T : IComparable
        {
            if (!props.ContainsKey(name))
            {
                props.Add(name, value);
            }
            else
            {
                if (props[name].CompareTo(value) != 0)
                {
                    props[name] = value;
                    OnPropertyChanged(new PropertyChangedEventArgs(name));
                }
            }
        }

        public T GetValue<T>(string name) where T : IComparable
        {
            return (T)props[name];
        }
  
        protected void OnPropertyChanged(PropertyChangedEventArgs args)
        {
            var handler = PropertyChanged;
            if (handler == null) return;
            handler(this, args);
        }
    }
}

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;

namespace JiraWpf.DataObjects
{
    public class Person : NotifyingObject
    {
        public Person()
        { }

        public string Name
        {
            get { return base.GetValue<string>("Name"); }
            set { base.SetValue("Name", value); }
        }
    }
}

Ok, this is already much better, property definitions are back to just 5 lines, but at least it is readable again. The NotifyingObject has a list of the property names and their values, so on a get, we look up the value in the list. On a set we compare with the value in the list, and when the 2 are different, we raise the event.
Now what still bothers me on this is that we type the property name 3 times in the Person class! Once in the property name itself, secondly in the get and another time in the set. This is asking for trouble on refactoring (renaming the property). No tool will change those names in the get and set, they are hardcoded string values ! This leads us to the following implementation of the 2 classes :

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace JiraWpf.DataObjects
{
    public class NotifyingObject : INotifyPropertyChanged
    {
        private Dictionary<string, IComparable> props;

        public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;

        public NotifyingObject()
        {
            props = new Dictionary<string, IComparable>();
        }

        public void SetValue<T>(T value) where T : IComparable
        {
            string name = GetCallerPropertyName();

            if (!props.ContainsKey(name))
            {
                props.Add(name, value);
            }
            else
            {
                if (props[name].CompareTo(value) != 0)
                {
                    props[name] = value;
                    OnPropertyChanged(new PropertyChangedEventArgs(name));
                }
            }
        }

        public T GetValue<T>() where T : IComparable
        {
            string name = GetCallerPropertyName();
            return (T)props[name];
        }

        protected void OnPropertyChanged(PropertyChangedEventArgs args)
        {
            var handler = PropertyChanged;
            if (handler == null) return;
            handler(this, args);
        }

        private string GetCallerPropertyName()
        {
            System.Diagnostics.StackTrace stack = new System.Diagnostics.StackTrace();
            System.Diagnostics.StackFrame currentFrame = stack.GetFrame(2);

            //strip of the set_ and get_  prefixes of the generated property names, to get the ones you typed
            string propname = currentFrame.GetMethod().Name.Substring(4);

            return propname;
        }
    }
}

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;

namespace JiraWpf.DataObjects
{
    public class Person : NotifyingObject
    {
        public Person()
        { }

        public string Name
        {
            get { return base.GetValue<string>(); }
            set { base.SetValue(value); }
        }
    }
}

We let the NotifyingObject look up the property name itself, preventing us from ever typing in a wrong name. This is now safe for refactoring.
Another benefit of the NotifyingObject is that you could foresee a way to postpone the raise event till all properties are set, a BeginUpdate and EndUpdate function could foresee that. Implementing extra logging is now also much easier. Anyway, with this baseclass ready, I can start working on the next part.
Stay tuned ....

Wpf : what you really need to understand first is databinding

2009-09-06T20:50:00.005+02:00

Learning the basics layout of a WPF program is not that difficult, I mean how to place basic controls like buttons, labels, textboxes, ... Making a great interface is something else, but that requires other skills, UI designer skills. But what I think is the most important part to understand early is the binding. This is the part of the course / book that I advise you to spent the most time on. I've lost too many hours finding out why my data was not visualised :
° Compilation : 0 warnings, 0 errors
° Setting a breakpoint on the method that delivered the data : breakpoint was never hit
° Output window did not show any errors, warnings
° Settings the ItemsSource in code behind works like a charm, so the data providing method works !

Below is an example program, see if you can find the mistake.

<Window x:Class="Damn.Window1"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:lc="clr-namespace:Damn" 
    Title="Window1" >

    <Window.Resources>
        <ObjectDataProvider x:Key="CCNetProject"
                            ObjectType="{x:Type lc:CCNetJiraDataProvider}"
                            MethodName="GetProjects"
           />

        <DataTemplate x:Key="CCNetProjectTemplate" >
            <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Background="LightBlue">
                <Label Content="{Binding Key}" Width="200"/>
                <Label Content="{Binding Description}" />
            </StackPanel>
        </DataTemplate>
    </Window.Resources>

    <StackPanel DockPanel.Dock="Top" Orientation="Vertical">
        <ListBox x:Name="lstY"
                         ItemsSource="{Binding StaticResource CCNetProject}"
                         ItemTemplate="{StaticResource CCNetProjectTemplate}"/>
    </StackPanel>

</Window>

So this has kept me busy for some hours, ok the mistake was mine, but how could I have found the error more easily?
I can not set a breakpoint in XAML, and setting a breakpoint in the method did not get hit. How do other WPF programmers pinpoint these kind of problems. For me this is a serious problem / shortcoming in Visual Studio. Any body knows some tips/tricks ?

Wpf : learning new grounds

2009-09-04T15:34:00.004+02:00

Part of my main job involves WPF, which I find hard to learn, coming from winforms and making mostly console utility apps (no events flying around). So I needed a pet project to learn this. I looked at CCNet, it has no WPF frontend, but that already exists, Cradiator aka BVC2, so another candidate had to be found.

A painpoint for me as developper on CCNet is to find items which have patches, our Jira Issue site has many search options, but that one is not provided. The good point is that there is a wsdl connection available to the issue tracker, which has this possibility ! An issue has an Attachements property, which is a list of strings, the filenames!
Basically all I need to do is get all open items, and filter out the ones where Attachements.Length != 0 .

The console version was finished in half an hour, the WPF, I'm still working on :-(
Details will follow in next posts. I'm also taking this project as a way to improve my knowledge of other items like patterns, refactoring, ...
And I want to do this project the 'WPF way', not winform like.

Do not worry, I'll keep working on CCNet to :-)

Continous Installation : How it works

2009-08-10T09:28:00.006+02:00

It's been a while since my last post ;-) but here is a new one. This post will give more detailed information of the setup I have to install software on 75 servers, and keep an eye on them. As you know, I use CCNet for distributing our software to our customers (about 70 for the moment). These installations involve click-once applications, database upgrades, server checks, ....

I made a presentation in openoffice and ms office so you can have a look, download the format of your choice and start the presentation (F5). Here's a short overview of the presentation :

Company is connected to an external Ftp Server via the Internet
Customers have an application server with CCNet pre-installed, which will connect at pre-defined times (schedule trigger) with the Ftp server
When there is a need for a change (new installation/ program),we upload a modified ccnet.config and the needed files.
When the schedule trigger fires, CCNet.Config is downloaded, and copied to the path where CCNet watches it. Meaning the new configuration will be read
If it needs, other files are also downloaded and executed / installed

Now, the 10 point question :
how do we know if an installation was ok, the server was updated, ... ?
At preset times, about 7 times a day, each appserver uploads the state of its CCNet service, this is the data you can see in the dashboard. This data is downloaded to the company and processed.
So we see if the update was ok ('build' ok or failed), and if the update was done or not, via the last executed time.