First of all I want to thank Diederik Krols for his help with a few problems I had.

CruiseControl.Net

In this chapter we will explain more CruiseControl.Net and CCTray.Net.

Installation of CruiseControl.Net

Download the latest version at the Thoughtworks website.

Now run the downloaded file (CruiseControl.NET-1.1-Setup.exe) to install CruiseControl.Net.  Just follow the instruction on screen and leave all options as default.  At the end restart your server.

Here we have encountered a problem (only one time).  It seems that our virtual directory isn’t created during the installation phase.  The error we got was that the user and password wasn’t correct, but the installation continued.

This could be solved by manually adding the Virtual Directory.  To do so, follow the next steps:

1. Open IIS
2. Create a new virtual directory
   1. Name : ccnet
   2. Directory : the standard installation dir (C:\Program Files\CruiseControl.NET\webdashboard)
   3. Add in the default documents also default.aspx.

Next step is to start the ccNet service manually.  But keep in mind that when starting the service it will run under the local account.  This account doesn’t have network rights to connect to the SourceSafe DB.  So you must have an account with enough rights.  Because for test purpose we are installing everything on our local machine and we will use our own account for the service.  If installing on a server ask the security people for a correct account.

From now on you could access the web dashboard of CruiseControl.net:

Local host: http://localhost/ccnet/
Access from other computers: :/ccnet">http://<servername>:<portnumber>/ccnet

Installation of CCtray

CCTray is a small client application for the team members.  With this application, they can follow up the build progress and is visible in the windows tray. 

To install CCTray, you can go to the web dashboard; there you will find a link for downloading CCTray.  Download this file and run it for the installation.  Just follow the instructions on the screen.

The color of the icon changes depending on the status of the CuirseControl.Net server:

•  : The most recent build was successful
•  : The most recent build failed
•  : The server is unavailable, or returned an error status
•  : The server is currently building the code

Right-clicking on a project displays a popup menu:

• Force build Wakes the CruiseControl.NET server from its sleep and tells it to start building immediately.
• Display Web Page Opens a browser at the CruiseControl.NET build web page for this project. The web page may also be launched by double-clicking the project.

Tray Icons

The following rules are applied, in this order, to determine the icon color:

• If at least one build is red, the icon is red
• If no builds are red but at least one is yellow, the icon is yellow
• If no build are red or yellow, but least one is grey, the icon is grey
• If all the builds are green, the icon is green

Balloon notifications

Balloon notifications use the standard Windows tray icon popup balloon whenever a build completes. Balloon notifications may be enabled/disabled.

Configuration

Advanced

Two configuration settings can be adjusted only by editing the configuration file directly:

• Balloon messages
• Icons

This is done in the cctray-settings.xml file.

Projects

After starting up CCTray doesn’t contain any projects.

You have to fill in your own projects.  To this follow these steps:

1. Go to File - Settings
   
2. At the bottom you will find the Build Servers section.  Here you can add your build servers and projects.  Click on the add button.
3. Fill in the server with port number (ex: Servername:21234) and click Add Server.  No you will see a list of projects on this server.
4. Choose your project and click OK.

Now you’re back in the setting screen of CCTray.  You will see that in the build server section, the selected project is visible.

Click on the OK button for leaving this screen.  You’re back on the main screen of CCTray.  And you see that the projects are also added here.

So this is it for this part.  In the next part we will describe how to add your VS 2003 projects in CruiseControl.Net with a Continuous Integration Build configuration.  In part 4 we will talk about using NAnt for our projects.