1. Continuous Integration
Tools in Perl
Michael Peters
Plus Three, LP
YAPC::NA 10
Pittsburgh, PA

2. What is CI?
●Build and test all the time
●As soon as you can
●As loud as you can
●On as many platforms as you need
●On as many different configurations as you need

3. What is CI?
●Home grown (bash + email)
●CruiseControl
●Buildbot
●Tinderbox
●CABIE
●Smolder
Hudson, TeamCity, Continuum, Cerberus, ControlTier,
●
OpenMake Mojo, lots of others

4. Take a drink

5. CruiseControl
●http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/
●Java based
●Very well known, "industry standard"
●Lots of plugins for lots of things
● SCM
● Notification
● Build management (make, Ant, Maven, rake)
● Lots more

6. CruiseControl
●Web UI
● View old builds/tests
● See what CruiseControl is doing right now
● Is it checking out code?
● Is it building?
●Build Loop Daemon
● Separate process to do the heavy lifting

7. CruiseControl

8. CruiseControl
Limitations and Complaints
● Not Perl (Java)
● Run loop is on a single machine
● They are working on distributed
● Format is not a standard
● Yes it's XML, but...
● Whatever JUnit spits out

9. CruiseControl
Limitations and Complaints
● Not Perl (Java)
● Run loop is on a single machine
● They are working on distributed
● Format is not a standard
● Yes it's XML, but...
● Whatever JUnit spits out
● All Java and all XML

10. Take a drink

11. Buildbot
●http://buildbot.net/trac
●Python based
●Designed to be distributed
● master/slave architecture
● nice for OSS projects and volunteers
●Tracks some metrics over time
● warnings
● link checks
● compile time
● etc

12. Buildbot
●Lots of notification channels
● Email
● IRC bot (real time insults)
● GTk app
●Lots of built-in support for CSMs
● CVS, svn, perforce, Bonsai, git, Mercurial,
Bazaar,
●Web UI
●CLI

13. Buildbot

14. Buildbot
Limitations and Complaints
● Not Perl (Python)
● Sometimes too heavy
● Ugggggly
● It's complicated
● Configuration is all Python
● Format is not standard
● Whatever your test spits out and returns
● Developer's can't customize notifications for
themselves
● No detailed breakdown of test failures

15. Take a drink

16. Tinderbox
●http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tinderbox
●Perl based
●Mozilla Project
● currently being rewritten
● used for Firefox, Thunderbird, etc
● Integrates with Bugzilla
● Only supports CVS
●Add comments to build runs
●Currently being rewritten
● Seems to use Buildbot underneath

17. Tinderbox

18. Tinderbox
Limitations and Complaints
● No packages, no releases (grab from CVS)
● Not much support
● from Mozilla
● nor the Perl community
● Just does CVS
● Developers can't customize their notifications
● Kind of ugly

19. Tinderbox
Limitations and Complaints
● Format is not standard
append 3:
object count 10 = 10 OK
array count 13 = 13 OK
0: 3=3 (0x84f9540) c: 4 OK
1: 0=0 (0x84f9510) c: 1 OK
2: 1=1 (0x84f9520) c: 1 OK
3: 2=2 (0x84f9530) c: 1 OK
4: 3=3 (0x84f9540) c: 4 OK
5: 4=4 (0x84f9550) c: 1 OK
6: 3=3 (0x84f9540) c: 4 OK
7: 5=5 (0x84f9560) c: 1 OK
8: 6=6 (0x84f9570) c: 1 OK
9: 7=7 (0x84f9580) c: 1 OK
10: 8=8 (0x84f9590) c: 1 OK
11: 9=9 (0x84f95e8) c: 1 OK
12: 3=3 (0x84f9540) c: 4 OK

20. Take a drink

21. CABIE
●http://cabie.tigris.org/
●Perl based
●Web UI and CLI tools
●Job daemon
● scheduled build jobs
● job priority
● job triggers
●Data stored in MySQL
●Email notification

22. CABIE

23. CABIE
Limitations and Complaints
● No installer
● Format is not standard
● Whatever text your build/test spit out and
return
● It's ugly too
● No community support

24. Take a drink

25. Smolder
●http://github.com/mpeters/smolder/tree/master
●Perl based
●Web UI
●Some CLI tools
●CPAN installable
●Public and Private
● understands projects
● understands developers
●Being used for Parrot VM project

26. Smolder
●View detailed reports about exactly what failed
● Ajax/on-demand
● Much easier to find what went wrong
●All reports are submitted TAP Archives
●All data stored in SQLite
●Notification channels
● Email
● Atom
●Tags
●Trend reporting

27. Smolder

28. Smolder

29. Smolder
Limitations and Complaints
● Fair number of dependecies
● 44 deps
● 132 deps of deps of deps...
● HTTP::Server::Simple isn't very reliable
● Hard coded notification options (only email and
Atom)
● No plugins for extra features
● No integration with other systems

30. Smolder
Limitations and Complaints
● No integrated build system
● simple bash script + cron
● SmokeRunner::Multi
● Module::Build::Smolder
● No notifications of build failures

31. Take a drink

32. My Dream Date
●Smolder and Buildbot sitting in a tree...
●Separate, but integrated build loop and reporting
●Build status and detailed test reporting
●Optionally distributed for multiple platforms and
parallel builds
●Standard formats
● TAP
● Something for the build notifications

33. My Dream Date
Pluggable architecture
●
● Notifications (email, twitter, building alarm system)
● SCM support
● Common build systems (make, Makefile.PL,
Build.PL, Ant, Maven, rake)
●Expose the TAP metadata for plugins to use
● Link to bug reports
● Link to source code or specs
● visual diffs
●Installable via CPAN
●Packagable for distros

34. Continuous Integration
Tools in Perl
Michael Peters
Plus Three, LP
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All comics borrowed from
Toothpaste For Dinner
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/