Extreme Feedback aka Status Lights (Das Blinkenlights)
Monitoring Automated Builds The Agile concept of continuous integration is useful no matter what the actual software development methodology. This is especially true as teams grow, projects branch and activity increases. We initially set up Hudson for our MAIN and FUTURE branches with one build per branch. Hudson notifies everyone about build failures via email. That works fine but it developers eventually suffer e-mail overload so we needed a more noticeable way of telling folks when builds are broken. (For us, broken means either compilation or unit tests fail). We purchased two Delcom USB powered lights and mounted them on the wall where everyone can see them. A Groovy script reads the Hudson build status for our two main branches using the CruiseControl (cctray.xml) URL and then sends commands to the build lights. The cctray standard is limited and doesn't show how far along a build and doesn't differentiate between compilation and unit tests. The Delcom lig