Last night we released the version 1.0 of the software I've been working on for the last six months. Hopefully that means I'll have more time for blogging and more time to explore all the new stuff that has been released recently. One of the things that has been essential to the success of our project has been continuous integration via CruiseControl.Net. We have a couple of build servers running CCNet and the feedback on developer check-ins (through Subversion) has been key.
When a developer breaks the build with a bad check-in, the scary guy comes and hangs out on their monitor until they get it fixed:
We try to have fun. :)
I've also set up CCTray to run on my development box. You can specify sound files to play for the different cruise control events. There are 7 other developers in the room with me (also known as lounge A) so when someone breaks the build they all know (lounge B had their own sounds). Below are the Napolean sound bytes we used which were great fun. I found them all on the movie wavs site.
We still have more work to do, more releases to come, but we managed to hit all our dates thanks in part to test-driven development with freeware tools: nant, ccnet, subversion, and nunit.