Friday Tab Sweep (18.01.08)

  • PeepCode on RSpec User Stories. The user stories look awesome as a replacement for Rails integration tests. The PeepCode is a good introduction on the topic, but falls awfully short on that issue. Using basic steps like saving an object, checking if it’s valid and checking whether it was actually stored in the database is a little bit too simple in my book, and something you shouldn’t be testing all that much anyway.

Reading List

I bought a nice stack of books recently, and I’m planning on buying some more. There’s a lot of good stuff, not only new books, but also some older books (as in from 2004, I’m not talking about the C++ books on my shelf).

Review: “Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risks”

I’ve been a fan and user of continuous integration for quite a while now, yet I’ve been keen to pick up the book “Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk” by Paul M. Duvall et. al. to see, if it can live up to be the first book dealing exclusively with the topic. They don’t have to sell me on the idea anymore, but still, there’s always something to learn.

CruiseControl in your Menu Bar

Now here’s a little gem I’ve been waiting for a long time, and that I just discovered today. Usually i just implemented custom scripts that would check the build status in CruiseControl and use Growl to notify me of build errors. I don’t like having my email client open all the time just to see if the build failed, so this is a god-given.

CCMenu wants to remedy that, and comes along with support for all the CruiseControls out there, sitting in your menu bar, and checking your dashboards for the build status. It also signalizes, if a build is currently running.

CCMenu

Just as you’d expect it to, in good pragmatic automation fashion, it’ll notify via Growl of the build status.

CCMenu Growl Notification

Apparently the tool has been written by ThoughtWorks people, no surprise here. Well done is all I can say. It still has some rough edges, but it’s open source, so no need to complain, just more reasons to dig in.

Been using it with CruiseControl.rb all day, and it’s working neatly.