I am starting to prepare a roadmap for our release process. We are at present using tortoise svn and ant for building source. I am considering implementing continuous integration and would like to know right direction for the choices below:
Firstly, the present process is such that a developer would work on a file, commits that file directly to repo. Others would run the tortoise update command to pull in the required changes. The same process is followed on the build server where in would update the source code, build and then deploy to qa and production servers. However, this process lacks control of repo since during an update, unwanted code is also pulled in case two developers worked on the same file fixing two different issues. One approved by qa and other rejected. How can i overcome this scenario.
Secondly, apart from source we have a bunch of other files such as xml files, css,js etc . How do i automate deployment of these files? I have configured cruisecontrol on my local machine and it works fine when it comes to executing a build but now sure how to handle other files since updating those files in production seems risky and error prone. Any suggestion in this would be really helpful.
You could try integrating PowerShell with CruiseControl, our team has CC fire off the build process and then PowerShell to copy the resulting project files (code and others) to production or a test site or wherever.
I’d suggest to deal with the lack of repository control that you create a candidate Branch off your Trunk and designate that as your Integration code. Once it’s settled and necessary changes have been committed or pulled, promote it to Regression for further testing. Then once that testing is successful, promote it to Production.
In this process your developers wouldn’t be committing to Production directly, but instead through an iterative process a new production repository will result, whose changes can then be reintegrated into Trunk so the process can start anew for the next release.