CruiseControl.Net (CCNet) configuration example for NCover

CruiseControl.Net is a great continuous integration tool for .Net projects. It not only continuously builds your software but provides some really helpful reports to monitor your project's progress.

In agile world, we all speak of self-testing code or test driven development (TDD). If we really want to ensure our code has enough test coverage, we need to use some tool to ease our lives and NCover is a good one for this purpose. To learn more about NCover, please visit this.

When integrating to CCNet, you can use a similar configuration in ccnet.config as shown below to show NCover reports for your project-

\par ?? <\cf3 msbuild\cf1 >\par ?? <\cf3 executable\cf1 >\cf0 C:\\WINDOWS\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v3.5\\MSBuild.exe\cf1 \par ?? <\cf3 projectFile\cf1 >\cf0 CISample.sln\cf1 \par ?? <\cf3 buildArgs\cf1 >\cf0 /p:Configuration=Debug\cf1 \par ?? <\cf3 targets\cf1 >\cf0 Rebuild\cf1 \par ?? <\cf3 timeout\cf1 >\cf0 300\cf1 \par ?? <\cf3 logger\cf1 >\cf0 C:\\Program Files\\CruiseControl.NET\\server\\ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.MsBuild.dll\cf1 \par ?? \par ??\par ?? \par ?? <\cf3 nunit\cf1 >\par ?? <\cf3 path\cf1 >\cf0 C:\\Program Files\\NUnit 2.4.1\\bin\\nunit-console.exe\cf1 \par ?? <\cf3 assemblies\cf1 >\par ?? <\cf3 assembly\cf1 >\cf0 CISample\\bin\\Debug\\CISample.dll\cf1 \par ?? \par ?? \par ??\par ?? \par ?? <\cf3 exec\cf1 >\par ?? <\cf3 executable\cf1 >\cf0 ncover.console.exe\cf1 \par ?? <\cf3 baseDirectory\cf1 >\cf0 CISample\\bin\\Debug\\\cf1 \par ?? <\cf3 buildArgs\cf1 >\cf0 nunit-console CISample.dll //xml coverage.xml //ea NUnit.Framework.TestFixtureAttribute\cf1 \par ?? \par ??\par ?? \par ?? <\cf3 exec\cf1 >\par ?? <\cf3 executable\cf1 >\cf0 NCoverExplorer.Console.exe\cf1 \par ?? <\cf3 baseDirectory\cf1 >\cf0 CISample\\bin\\Debug\\\cf1 \par ?? <\cf3 buildArgs\cf1 >\cf0 coverage.xml /xml /r:ModuleMethodFunctionSummary\cf1 \par ?? \par ??\par ?? } -->

10 <tasks>

11 <!-- Task for MSBuild -->

12 <msbuild>

13 <executable>C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\MSBuild.exe</executable>

14 <projectFile>CISample.sln</projectFile>

15 <buildArgs>/p:Configuration=Debug</buildArgs>

16 <targets>Rebuild</targets>

17 <timeout>300</timeout>

18 <logger>C:\Program Files\CruiseControl.NET\server\ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.MsBuild.dll</logger>

19 </msbuild>

20

21 <!-- Task for NUnit -->

22 <nunit>

23 <path>C:\Program Files\NUnit 2.4.1\bin\nunit-console.exe</path>

24 <assemblies>

25 <assembly>CISample\bin\Debug\CISample.dll</assembly>

26 </assemblies>

27 </nunit>

28

29 <!-- Task for NCover -->

30 <exec>

31 <executable>ncover.console.exe</executable>

32 <baseDirectory>CISample\bin\Debug\</baseDirectory>

33 <buildArgs>nunit-console CISample.dll //xml coverage.xml //ea NUnit.Framework.TestFixtureAttribute</buildArgs>

34 </exec>

35

36 <!-- Task for NCoverExplorer -->

37 <exec>

38 <executable>NCoverExplorer.Console.exe</executable>

39 <baseDirectory>CISample\bin\Debug\</baseDirectory>

40 <buildArgs>coverage.xml /xml /r:ModuleMethodFunctionSummary</buildArgs>

41 </exec>

42

43 </tasks>

You see that there are two NCover related <exec> nodes. The first one generates the coverage.xml. Then using this first one you can create actual report to present specifying the desired level of details of the report.

Set and Compile using C# Language Version 2.0 in Visual Studio 2008

I know, while most of you are very happy with the new features in Visual Studio 2008, its sad that not all your deployment environments are upgraded to .Net framework 3.5. I had a similar situation as well on one of my projects.

Its great that you can just navigate to a VS 2008 project file properties and from the Application Tab select the Target .Net Framework version to use one of .Net 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5. But this doesn't solve all the problems. You will soon discover that, your application doesn't show an error when you write C# 3.0 code with the target framework set to 2.0. This is because, the IDE by default uses the latest language version by default.

To solve this problem, Navigate to project properties > Build > Advanced > Language Version and choose ISO-2 (or ISO-1). Now with this information, the VS 2008 will start showing compiler errors for features that don't comply to the version specification!

BDD - My First BDD Code using RSpec in Ruby

I am really really happy to see people putting so much efforts for building high quality, nearly all avoidable error free software. I am a big believer of Test Driven Development and doing TDD for about two years now. I have always had the feeling that TDD is a kind of a misnomer because to some people the term 'Test' refers to finding bugs. For this very reason, when people gets started with TDD, they consider it as a waste of time to write so much extra code that doesn't necessarily find bugs!

Well, a good vocabulary always makes it more attractive and useful. Now with BDD, Behavior Driven Development, I think the vocabulary that people actually codes the behaviors and implements the behaviors, not the tests, makes it more like it.

So, lets see my first ever written RSpec ruby code and the sexy html output!

#This is a poor Stack implementation

class Stack
def initialize
@items = []
end
def push(item)
@items << item
end
def pop
return nil unless @items && @items.length > 0
item = @items.last
@items.delete item
return item
end
def peek
return nil unless @items && @items.length > 0
@items.last
end
def empty?
@items.empty?
end
end

#This is the RSpec ruby code. Isn't is Simple?

describe Stack do
before(:each) do
@stack = Stack.new
end
describe "Empty" do
it "Should be empty when created" do
@stack.empty?.should == true
end
end
describe "With One Item (value = 3)" do
before(:each) do
@stack.push(3)
end
it "should not be empty" do
@stack.empty?.should be_false
end
it "should return the item (=3) when #peek" do
@stack.peek.should == 3
end
it "should return the item (=3) when #pop" do
@stack.pop.should == 3
end
end
end

Well, we all write codes and are doing this day and night for years. What I like to see is as sexy an output as the following from my source code :-)

I know, you liked the output. For more you may check at http://rspec.info/

Need a similar solution on .Net? Keep Googling and come back to me if you see a good BDD tool. I would really like to use BDD in my .Net projects and see how better it performs over TDD.