Get your build fixed faster... broadcast your failures!

We've been talking about setting up a build box light for ages.

The other day my project manager bought a USB Visual Signal Indicator. An hour of hacking .. and we now have a light that's green on a passing build and flashes red on a breaking build.

We are using CruiseControl.Net as our build machine, so I controled the light using a custom build publisher.

The result we are experiencing is the build is gets fixed faster. I have a few theories as to why.

Here is the code...

using System;
using System.Text;
using Exortech.NetReflector;
using ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Core;
using ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Remote;


namespace FlashLightPublisher
{
    [ReflectorType("flashlight")]
    public class FlashLightPublisher : ITask
    {
        [ReflectorProperty("goGreenOnPass", Required = false)] public bool GoGreenOnPass = true;

        public void Run(IIntegrationResult result)
        {
            StringBuilder DeviceName = new StringBuilder(Delcom.MAXDEVICENAMELEN);

            int Result = Delcom.DelcomGetNthDevice(Delcom.USBDELVI, 0, DeviceName);

            if (Result == 0)
            {
                throw new Exception("no usb device");
            }

            uint hUSB = Delcom.DelcomOpenDevice(DeviceName, 0);
            switch (result.Status)
            {
                case IntegrationStatus.Success:
                    if (GoGreenOnPass)
                    {
                        Delcom.DelcomLEDControl(hUSB, Delcom.REDLED, Delcom.LEDOFF);
                        Delcom.DelcomLEDControl(hUSB, Delcom.GREENLED, Delcom.LEDON);
                        Delcom.DelcomLEDControl(hUSB, Delcom.BLUELED, Delcom.LEDOFF);
                    }
                    break;
                case IntegrationStatus.Exception:
                case IntegrationStatus.Failure:
                    Delcom.DelcomLEDControl(hUSB, Delcom.GREENLED, Delcom.LEDOFF);
                    Delcom.DelcomLEDControl(hUSB, Delcom.REDLED, Delcom.LEDFLASH);
                    Delcom.DelcomLEDControl(hUSB, Delcom.BLUELED, Delcom.LEDOFF);
                    break;
                case IntegrationStatus.Unknown:
                    Delcom.DelcomLEDControl(hUSB, Delcom.BLUELED, Delcom.LEDON);
                    break;
            }

            Delcom.DelcomCloseDevice(hUSB);
        }
    }
}

Our ccnet.config file contains the following snippet...

...
<publishers>
  <flashlight/>
  ...
</publishers>

Note: We have few sequencial builds set up so we don't class the build as green until all the builds have passed. I therefore have all the builds able to make the light go red, but only the last build make it go green.