Automation Environment Tool: CruiseControl.NET

Summary

CCNet takes advantage of your other tools—NAnt as a way to build your source code, NUnit for testing, and NMock for mock objects when and where you need them—and wraps them in automation. By doing this, you have put in place a way to receive rapid feedback at steady intervals. You will still want all the developers to run their own local builds and unit tests, and perform their own integration testing before they check in their source code changes. But with the help of CCNet, you have a way of communicating the project’s status to everyone all the time. This will also help prevent your developers from getting lazy or sloppy about their source code check-ins, because they know that CCNet will always report the truth. This will also help you produce higher-quality software.

In the next chapter, you will add another valuable tool to your XP tool set: refactoring. It is not a tool that you automate with CCNet, as with NAnt and NMock, but you will use it every day that you write code.