Subversion, TeamCity, and Rake = Wow

Whenever I start a new project there are certain things that I always need to do. I need to setup the source code repository, create a basic project structure, create a build script to build the project, and setup the project on a build server.

A few months ago I realized just how much I hated doing all of this. Setting up the repository was the easiest part. I've been using Subversion for years. Instead of hosting my own subversion server, I use a third party. I'll let them manage the server, subversion upgrades and the backups. Because of this, setting up the repository was basically logging into a control panel, filling out a form, and that's basically it. However, after this was completed, the tasks became much more redundent. 

For the longest time I used NAnt for my build engine. It is a good tool, no doubt. The problem is I hate XML. I hate it. It's not the language itself really. It's how people use XML. NAnt uses XML as the way to write the build script. I hated creating the scripts and I hated modifying them.

Of course, my XML troubles didn't end there. I used CruiseControl.net as my CI (build) server. The application itself is OK. It's not great and has aged quite a bit. By far my biggest problem with CC.NET is the process of adding a new project. In order to add a new project to CC.NET, you must modify an XML file. If you have many projects configured, that file may be quite large.

I don't know about you, but after setting up my build script and setting up the project in CC.NET, I'm pretty tired of looking at XML.

Taking a look at TeamCity

After reading a ton of blogs and twitter messages from people talking about TeamCity, I decided to give it a shot. I wasn't really sure what to expect. I thought it would be good as I'm a huge ReSharper fan (the same company that makes ReSharper also makes TeamCity), but didn't really know if it would fit my needs.

Fortunately, JetBrains (makers of TeamCity) markets a version of TeamCity targeted for smaller teams that doesn't cost a thing. I grabbed it, installed it on a VM, and played around. To make a long story short, I'm still using it. TeamCity is a really nice CI server. It's very extensible and configuration is a breeze. You can add projects and build configurations straight from the browse. No need to modify XML files. TeamCity supports a number of different version control systems and build environments out-of-the-box. NAnt, MSBuild, Ant, and command-line are just a few. Because of this I was able to migrate my project from CC.NET to TeamCity in no time. 

Replacing NAnt with Rake

After deciding to go with TeamCity, I felt pretty good. I had solved one problem. I cannot tell you how much time I've saved because of it. After a while, though, I started to look for replacement options for NAnt. Like I said before, I like NAnt, but I wanted something better than XML. After doing some research, I decided to look into Rake, a build tool programmed in Ruby. I noticed a few .NET developers using Rake successfully. One evening I loaded my NAnt build script and replicated the entire script using Rake. I've done some work in Ruby so it didn't take that long to convert everything over. Obviously, you don't have the pre-made nant tasks, but creating a reusable framework that calls the executables for various tools (msbuild, nant) wasn't too bad. After I got it working locally, I modified my existing build configuration in TeamCity to call the new rake script. Initially, I used the rake runner in TeamCity. After a while, I wasn't getting the results that I wanted so I switched to the simple command-line runner. After tweaking a few minor things, I was done. 

Looking Back

I'm really satisifed how things turned out. TeamCity is a joy to work with. Managing Rake build scripts instead of XML files just feels right. If you're looking for a replacement or you're just getting into this territory, you should really take a look at TeamCity and Rake.

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