CI Factory with Subversion in a custom path

The CI Factory docs are pretty good, but being a first timer (ci factory noob!), I struggled a bit with this.

I found this FAQ entry which says to modify files in an already installed CI Factory project directory. It was easy enough to find CCNetServer.Bat in my Default directory that came in the CI Factory zip file, but the run.bat script was still failing.

It turns out that Nant needs the path to your svn.exe (well, of course it does!) and that everything CI Factory defaults to finding things in c:\Program Files\Subversion\bin. Well I don’t keep my SVN there. I keep it in c:\devtools\svn-win32-1.4.3\bin. Just add a PATH statement to the top of your run.bat script.

I gave my run.bat a nice little header that looks like this:

PATH=%PATH%;c:\devtools\svn-win32-1.4.3\bin

cd “c:\devtools\CI Factory”

The cd is because CI Factory’s run.bat (main install script) likes to setup IIS stuff. That is neato in a foolish Windows environment where you run as admin, but not so great when you aren’t running as admin and thus can’t modify IIS configuration. Not to mention I don’t even haven IIS installed!

It was at this point that I browsed my SVN tree again and noticed that CI Factory ACTUALLY WRITES BACK TO MY SCM!!! This is completely unacceptable and what is worse is that I didn’t read it ANYWHERE in the Installation or Introduction documentation. This is the kind of behavior which should have HUGE all upper case read warning text!

So much for CI Factory. I guess Its CC.NET manually for me.

2 thoughts on “CI Factory with Subversion in a custom path”

  1. Hi Jay W.,
    That is a shame. 🙁
    You are right that the docs should tell you that by default it will push everything to you SCM. I guess I have forgotten or assumed that everyone has watched the DotNetRocks screencast, it shows this behavior. If the script did not write to your SCM you would have to import it yourself. So I would guess that your real issue is that you don’t want that structure and or content in your SCM. If this is true I would ask you to think about why it is a bad idea and why it is a good idea.

    So your deal breaking issue for using CI Factory is what exactly? I ask not in confrontation but from the desire to better the product.

    Smiles,
    Jay F.

  2. Hi Jay W.,
    After going back to correct the issue I find that it is in fact like the 15th sentence in the Install guide.

    I would still like to understand your experience better.

    Thanks Again,
    Jay F.

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