Question

We are evaluating CI environments, there are a number out there:

TeamCity, Go, CCnet, BuildForge, TeamBuild, FinalBuilder Pro, Visual Studio Team System.

I’m having the most difficulty evaluating CCnet vs. Go

What are the pros/cons of each against one another?

Answer 1

Lucas,

First, the word of warning – I work for a vendor in this space (Urbancode – the AnthillPro guys). [/disclaimer]

I think it depends on what you’re really trying to get out of the tool and it’s hard to guess based on your selected tools. You have free tools, cheap tools, moderate tools, and expensive ones in your list. If you’re looking to create a build infrastructure for a big enterprise, the expensive guys are more appropriate whereas if you’re setting up just a team level system, open source may be fine.

Aside from scalability, perhaps the biggest difference between tools like Go (and AnthillPro for the matter) and CC.Net is what you’re looking to do with them when the build is done. If after the build, all you do is send an email, a basic, team level CI system can be a good fit. If instead, you want to deploy it to one test environment, either system may suffice. If you want to deploy a build through six test environments, get some approvals, and then deploy to production with full audit trails the whole way through, something like CC.Net just isn’t going to cut it. You’re looking at the Go’s, BuildForges, and Anthill’s of the world.

Things like integrations are a big deal as well – the tool has to work with the other tools you use.