As part of my new job as Chief Software Architect here in Calcium, one of my task is setting up a "state of the art" build/testing environment so that the various developers working on the project know if they broke something with their latest commit, or the exotic Java-.NET integration stopped working.

I already setup a CC.NET build server (and I already wrote about something I did), but Continuous Integration is useless if nobody knows about the results of the builds in a timely way.

We have all servers (both the build and the test server) in our office, so I installed CCTray on the one with speakers (and sometimes we use as Jukebox ) and configured a few audio alert for builds.

In the CC.NET version 0.6 there were 2 sets of audio files, but they have been removed in following version.

The first set is featuring a space age metallic female voice that says:

• Successful build: "Confirmed"
• Fixed build (that means transition from broken to successful build): "Program loaded and ready"
• Broken build: "Warning, the system has become unstable"
• Still failing (means the last commit didn't fix the build): "Negative"

The second set is from Homer Simpson:

• "DOH!!" whenever a build is broken
• "WOOHOO!!" whenever a build is successful

and it doesn't care about transition from broken to successful build.

In our office we adopted a mixed solution: we are using the 2 Simpson's audio files for everything but the transition from broken to successful, where we use the "Program loaded and ready" audio file.

Anyway I think a better solution to CI notification is to have visual reminder of the status of the builds, something like the server screensaver.

You can download the CCTray audio files from CC.NET cvs archive, or you can download it from the zip file I created for your convenience.