CCNetConfig

There was an update to CodePlex today. They added some nice new features. You can now browse and view change sets via a browser, There are rss feeds for specific items now and you can edit your posts.

Doesn't look like they implemented my 2 requests:

API to Submit a release
API to submit new work items

If you haven't voted for these, please do so. If these get implemented, the nightly builds and releases can all be located on CodePlex and automated by CruiseControl.NET. I really don't understand why they have Nightly Build as an option in the releases, I can't see anyone actually manually submitting a nightly build there.


There is now an RSS Feeds tab on the project pages that has links to the specific RSS Feed for the project. Here are the links for CCNetConfig.

ccnetconfig
Includes all project updates: wiki, releases, work items, source code check-ins, and discussions
Wiki
Changes to the home page and other wiki pages
Releases
New and updated releases
Issue Tracker
New work items and updates to (including closing) existing work items
Source Code
New check-ins of change sets
Discussions
Forum Discussions

I have been messing with ideas on how to handle previous versions of CruiseControl.NET and I have a solution working for displaying properties in the property grid. I have to still check in those files and then add the version attributes to the properties. But I have been playing with how to know what version to use to save and open a configuration file. I haven't been able to come up with a way for creating a new configuration on how to determine what version without asking the user. So what I have come up with is to actually ask the user when they create a new configuration. There will be a dialog that opens, probably will be something similar to when you create a new project  in Visual Studio, except not as many options. It will have a list of versions to select from and then where to save the configuration.

I am thinking of saving another file, sort of like a project file, that will store information on what version of CruiseControl.NET to use. That way, when the config file is loaded again, the project file can load the information on what version to use.

If a config is opened and the project file is not found in the directory, then I am thinking of using a dialog something like this

Where the user would select what version to use when they open the file. I know the screenshot is for a save dialog, but the concept is the same. The save dialog would be used if a user wanted to save to a different version of CruiseControl.NET then what was selected when the configuration was created or the last time it was saved as a different version.

None of this is yet implemented, I think i want to release a final before I put these in a release. There haven't been any bugs reported in a while except the couple that were fixed in the last couple nightly's. So I hope to release a final very soon.

I think i came up with a solution on how to support multiple versions of CruiseControl.NET. I am going to use custom attributes on the properties. I have created 4 new classes.

• VersionAttribute: This is an abstract class that takes a Version as a parameter. Supports the same constructors that the System.Version object does.
• MinimumVersionAttribute: Inherits from VersionAttribute. This attribute will indicate the minimum allowed version.
• MaximumVersionAttribute: Inherits from VersionAttribute. This attribute will indicate the maximum allowed version.
• ExactVersionAttribute: Inherits From VersionAttribute. This attribute will indicate that a property is only available in the specified version.

I haven't yet figured out how to choose what version of CruiseControl.NET config to use. I would like to do so automatically so the user doesn't need to know this information when creating a new configuration or when loading an existing configuration.

Also I need to figure out how to actually hide properties that do not belong to a specific version from the PropertyGrid Control. I am in the process of working on a couple of ideas. Hopefully I will have a solution in the next few days.

CruiseControl.NET version 1.2 has been released. You can see the full release notes here. There is a breaking change with the CVS block, see the CVS Block Documentation for more information.

Here are the highlights of this release:

• Subversion provider can now automatically checkout source
• CVS provider can now automatically checkout source (there are configuration changes required for this)
• CCNet server does a better job of killing child processes when it stops or shuts down.
• Server log reporting in WebDashboard is improved. Server logs can now be viewed per project.
• Improved Mono support.
• Can view project configuration through the WebDashboard

These changes will cause some changes to CCNetConfig. When creating a new configuration or opening a config file CCNetConfig might have to ask what version of CruiseControl you are configuring, or some other means for CCNetConfig to know this information. We will start working on supporting 1.2 as soon as possible.

The latest nightly has a couple new features and some bug fixes.

• Scheduled trigger name not loading from file is fixed
• Create a copy of a project
• This will copy the entire project, all the triggers, tasks publishers and copy them to a new project. This is if you have projects that the configuration is close to each other you don't have to completely recreate the project. Eventually you will be able to copy single items like a trigger, to another project.

The nightly should be available now.

There have been some new bugs being reported. They are being worked on and there is a new nightly build.

The nightly build creates a back up file before saving your configuration file and fixes the issue with extra data left from a previous configuration save at the end of the file. Also fied in the nightly is the issue with the Schedule trigger was not loading the name from the config file.

Thanks to pknut for those changes. also pknut if you subscribe or read this contact me @

The January "Orcas" CTP is now available as a self-extracting install or as a Virtual PC image. Here are some of the highlights from this CTP that I am looking forward to seeing.

The highlights of this CTP include:

• C# 3.0 Language Support: This CTP implements all of the C#3.0 language features from the May LINQ CTP including:
  • Query Expressions
  • Object and Collection Initializers
  • Extension Methods
  • Local Variable Type Inference and Anonymous Types
  • Lambdas bound to Delegates and Expression trees

• LINQ to Objects API
  • The LINQ to Objects API supports queries over any .NET collection, such as arrays and Generic Lists. This API is defined in the System.Linq namespaces inside System.Core.dll.

• ClickOnce improvements
  • This CTP delivers ClickOnce improvements for the deployment of Windows Presentation Foundation applications, alternative browser support and ISV rebranding.

• Runtime and design-time support for Office 2007 (including Outlook 2007)
  • Customers can build managed code add-ins with a consistent development experience, regardless of which version of Office they target, which Office application(s) they target, and which programming language they choose. Managed code add-ins enable developers to use strongly-typed class members, with the help of modern development tools, including intellisense and auto-complete. Additionally add-ins can potentially run in multiple versions of Office, enabled by abstracting version-specific code and supported by a version-resilient infrastructure.

• Client service support for Login/Logout, Role management and Profiles
  • ASP.NET 2.0 shipped with new application services for authentication, authorization and personalization. Most of these services are not tied to ASP.NET and can work in non-web applications. This CTP enables the use of these services in smart client applications for Logon/Logoff, Role management and profiles.

• Jscript Intellisense support
  • Jscript code formatting and Intellisense support provide developers with a richer editing experience. These improvements enable the IDE to provide statement completion, color syntax highlighting and in-place documentation to Jscript and associated script models such as ASP.NET AJAX.

• A new numeric type that provides support for very large numbers (Beyond the range of In64)
  • All existing numeric types in the Framework have a limited range. This is the first type that supports arbitrary range and will extend to accommodate any large number as needed. This type lives in the new System.Numeric namespace where all new numeric and arithmetic features are going to reside. It supports all the basic arithmetic operations including things like Pow, DivRem and GreatestCommonDivisor. It implements the following interfaces: IFormattable, IComparable, IComparable<BigInteger> and IEquatable<BigInteger>. It is serliazable and immutable. It has implicit casts from all basic integral types and explicit casts to/from all numeric type. To learn more about this type – please visit the BCL team blog.

• LINQ over XML (XLinq)
  • Enable further LINQ over XML feature support (in addition to the functionality available in the Oct 2006 CTP) such as the ability to apply XLST to transform into and out of XLinq trees, support for System.XML reader/writer interfaces for improved XML sharing with DOM applications and System.XML schema validation for XLinq nodes.

This project is currently hosted on CodePlex. CC.NET is used to build this project and this project is used to maintain the configuration file for the builds. CodePlex has some nice features and for the most part I am happy with the free service that they offer. There are a couple features in CodePlex that I would like to see to help fully automate the build process and maintaining the product.

1. Anonymous Bug/Issue Submission: Currently you have to be a registered user to submit an a bug for a project. This isn't that big of a deal by itself but when combined with the next item, it can cause some problems
2. API to submit Bug/Issue: If there was anonymous bug/issue submission and some API to submit these, applications could have this built in to the application to automatically submit any bugs to the CodePlex Issue Tracker. Currently CCNetConfig uses a different bug tracker and the items that are verified as bugs are manually added to CodePlex.
3. API to create a Release: The build process for projects can be automated using tools like CC.NET, but the creation of the release on CodePlex has to be manually created. I doubt that many project coordinators have the time to manually create a Release for every Nightly, Alpha, Beta, RC, and Production release. I know I don't, that is why the nightly builds are only available on this site and not on CodePlex. If there was an API available to automate this on CodePlex, a task could be added to the CC.NET configuration and nightly builds could also be on CodePlex as well.
   

I have submitted 2 Issues to the CodePlex team regarding the features above. If these sound like features you would like to also see added to CodePlex, please follow the link below and vote for them so the team sees the need for these features.

API to Submit a release
API to submit new work items

 

CCNetConfig RC1 is now available via auto-updates and on CodePlex. The codeplex release was a little late because CodePlex was giving me some problems creating the release. But it is working now and the release is there. The build number for RC1 is 0.3.0.2.