Month: February 2013

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Setting up my infrastructure – Part 4: Build server requirements

Okay, after the short delay I want to continue with my pre-thoughts for the tooling evaluation for my pet project. I already mentioned my requirements for a task and bug tracking tool to coordinate my work and keep me on track.

Now the second important thing is to stay in control of my code I'm going to produce driven by those tasks. For that I want a good suite of unit- and integration tests. The next logical step is having the tests run at every checkin, so a CI / build server is required. This also automatically opens up the possibility to automatically deploy certain parts of my project to test, staging and eventually production environments. So this is something I totally want to go for.

My personal requirements for a CI / build server:

  • Work fine with .NET environments
    I want to write something for .NET developers. As such, my pet project is a .NET project itself. I like to use the things that come in the same box as .NET (MSBuild, MSTest). Whatever tool I chose, it should support that out of its own box.
  • Work fine with Git
    Okay, that probably is a no-brainer. Git is the new SVN (just talking about adoption here, please don't kill me for that comparison), and I assume all tools out there will have Git support in some degree.
  • Can build branches automagically
    That probably comes with 'fine' Git support. Whenever I create a new branch and push it to the repo the CI server builds from, this branch should build too automatically. This way I know for sure everything is working before merging stuff.
  • Easy to setup
    I actually want to work on my project and don't spend all my spare time with getting my infrastructure up and running.
  • Integrate with my bug tracker
    As already mentioned in the previous post, a two-way integration of Ci server and task tracking would be extremely cool, but is not an absolute must-have.
  • Allow extensions with reports easily
    I think about code coverage analysis, running FxCop and or StyleCop on the Buildserver and have their reports displayed directly with the build report. Not from the very beginning, but such things should be possible.

So, that's pretty much it for the CI / build server.

The next post will bring some light in the darker areas of the infrastructure part, like where to host my Git repositories and what additional tooling may be nice when working with the code. This will also raise some questions about hosting in general as well as setup and tooling on the server, which may affect the tools that I'm going to evaluate.

Continue with the next part, or see the other parts in this series:

[contentblock id=infrastructurelinks]

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Some delay with my pet project

Just a short update about my pet project and the evaluation posts:

I'm a little bit late with my project. The reason is that I had some high load periods at my job and I had to finish an article for a magazine.

Now with the high load managed and the article written, I'm fully commited to my project again and will continue with my tool evaluation. Be prepared to read more soon.

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Setting up my infrastructure – Part 3: Bug tracker requirements

In my last blog post I explained why I want to automate as much as possible. For this I want a build server. The next thing that's really important to me is, to log every issue and idea I have and have myself organized through the project.

For that I'm going to evaluate some tools, and before you start with downloading and installing all sort of tools and testing them, you should know what you're looking for.

So lets start:
My personal requirements for a bug / task tracking tool:

  • Easy input of tasks / bugs / features / ideas
    I don't want to spend a lot of time on 'managing' my task manager, and I certainly don't want to overmanage myself.
  • Work log / spend time tracking
    Even though it's a pet project, I'd like to see how much time a certain feature has cost. Additionally, if I can see my estimates vs. reality, and I log the reasons why I needed less/more time, I can improve my estimates.
  • Change logs / Release Notes report
    I'd love to be able to generate my release notes out of the tasks that have been fixed for a certain release, so I have to maintain this information only in a single place. Like in an additional field of the task, where I just enter the information that should be visible in the release notes.
  • Documentation
    Not necessarily required in the Bug tracker, but if I can note some technical details (i.e. in custom fields), then I know where to look for the information to build up the real project's documentation.
  • Integration with VCS / Build server
    In a perfect world I would be able to see the related task(s) from a commit, the related commits from a task, the builds within the build server affected by those commits and the other way round: I would be able to open the corresponding tasks directly from the build in the build server.
  • An easy API

If that tool would support a little bit of analysis / reporting, that'd be totally great. I already mentioned the release notes generation above, but also time spent on features vs. bugs would be an interesting figure for my project. The last bullet point would hopefully make up for all the things that I would like, but that are not supported out of the box. Nevertheless, I actually don't want to lock me in a specific tool, so writing custom stuff for a single solution would only be that last option, since that time is definetly lost when switching tools.

In the next post I want to share my thoughts on what a ci / build server should be capable of, before we want to start with the real evaluation.

Continue with the next part, or see the other parts in this series:

[contentblock id=infrastructurelinks]

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Who am I? And how to prove?

Since I am currently setting up my infrastructure for my pet project, I wanted to sort out some little details.

My Bug tracker, the build server software, the repository managament... all this will be web based, and hosted on my new virtual server Gallifrey (that now also serves this blog). I don't want my credentials go over the internet in plain text, so I want to access these applications only over HTTPS.

Now, of course I could simply use a self signed certificate and trust the certificate on all my machines, but what if I'm going to partner up with somebody else? An official SSL certificate would be better.

A colleague pointed me to StartSSL. They offer a 2 year multi-domain, wildcard certificate for just 59 USD. So I signed up there and - my bad - entered my mobile number as my contact number. That was a problem, because as I would get to know soon after that, they do a three-way check to validate my identity.

1.) They want to see two recent photo ID's of me. So I emailed them photographs of my ID and my drivers licence.
2.) To validate my address and my name they wanted to see a phone bill showing my name and the address and the phone number.
3.) They call the number that, as by the documents, belong to the same person identified by the photo IDs, to ask for additional informations given on the ID (like place and date of birth).

Now the problem was, that my mobile phone contract is not mine, but payed by my company. So the phone bill didn't show my name and they could not do this validation. After a few mails I figured out, that they could swap my mobile against my landline number, and so I emailed them a pdf scan of my land line bill, which shows me as the owner. Now that PDF scan was a bit too big for their email system, and until I figured that out a full day passed. By know I know that my email bounce notifications are sent every 24 hours.

Well, they called me on the landline, asked those questions and a few hours later I had my certificate.
So, you should be able to connect to this blog also via https, and also the other domains and web applications are secured too.

When you want a certificate from StartSSL, better be prepared and give them a phone number where your name is on the bill...

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This blog just moved

Hello from.. Gallifrey.

As you should see in the footer, this blog just moved and now is hosted on my new server Gallifrey. Previously it was located on smarthost01, I admit, a very boring name for a server.

Perhaps it's intersting for you, how I moved this installation. This was done in a few easy steps. I...
1.) scripted a backup of the database (including the user) directly in my wordpress directory using HeidiSQL,
2.) initiated a new Git repository in my wordpress directory, added all files to the repo and commited, then deleted the SQL file again,
3.) created a new repo on my Stash evaluation instance on the new server,
4.) pushed the local copy to the new repo,
5.) cloned the fresh repo on Gallifrey,
6.) executed the SQL file using HeidiSQL on Gallifreys MariaDB and then deleted the SQL file,
7.) configured an web in IIS on the directory, and applied the same file system permissions,
8.) tested the installation and switched the DNS entries from smarthost01 to Gallifrey.

That was done in about 10 minutes in total. By the time of this posting, the DNS change should be propagated wide enough that you should see this served from Gallifrey. Moving a blog instance using Git is very easy and comfortable, so if you feel the urge to move your blog, this could be the way to go.