Hudson and Symfony continuous integration

February 5, 2010 – 4:02 pm

We’ve been experimenting this week with using Hudson as our continuous integration server for our latest Symfony project.  Previous experiences with CruiseControl via phpUnderControl and the symfonyUnderControl plugin were OK-ish but we’d occasionally experience CruiseControl dying on us with no warning apart from the lack of emails after checking our code in.

So we decided it was time to perhaps investigate alternatives.  The obvious choice for Symfony would be to use Sismo, but sadly it hasn’t been released yet… Fabien, any clues as to a release date? ;-) It looks at the moment as if we’re stuck with a Java-based solution, so we decided to look at Hudson as an alternative.

Setting up Hudson was straightforward using Nicolas Perriault’s blog post on exactly what we were trying to achieve, linking in with our Subversion repository.  The configuration of the projects took a bit of faffing – for some reason, Hudson liked to check out the whole repository rather than just eg the trunk folder  as specified, so this screwed up some of the paths.  A bit of trial and error later and we were up and running with a build every 30mins if there are new commits, as this pretty graph shows… (using the jUnit XML output available in Symfony 1.4).  Total number of tests in blue, failures in red.

Hudson build trend output

One thing to bear in mind if you’re getting test failures randomly, or perhaps always after a certain developer checks in (and it’s not a result of broken code) is to ensure that the permissions are correct for Symfony, as SVN likes to store permissions where it can.  The fix for this, apart from committing new permissions, is to add a build step in Hudson that carries out ./symfony project:permissions (Symfony 1.3+) shortly before the build.  This seems to solve it nicely, and explained the small red peaks in the graph above.

By Rich | Posted in Agile, Test Driven Development, Web development | Comments (0)

24 hours in 3 minutes : our 24 hour startup

December 4, 2009 – 11:05 am

This time lapse shows the White October team along with our friends from Hutchhouse and Nonsense as we conceive, design, build and launch a new business in 24 hours. You can read all about the day here : 24hour-startup.com and you can see the results here : drhue.com which (until 12:00 on Sunday) you can buy on eBay!  (Current highest bid : $1,275)

By Dave | Posted in Uncategorised | Comments (0)

Movember day 30 – the last day

November 30, 2009 – 11:17 pm

It seems impossible to believe, but we’ve made it to the last day:

Movember day 30

The bros and their mos have been through a lot over the past month and I think it’s fair to say we’re all proud of what we’ve achieved. On the 1st of Movember, we were innocent smoothies, now we’re a seriously mean looking gang of four.

Sure, there have been funny looks from folks all over the place, but those people are fools who just don’t appreciate the sheer awesomeness of a hirsute upper lip. For true messages of appreciation, let’s turn to some ‘randomly’ selected comments from our generous donors:

  • “I have my suspicions that you’re dying your mustache but nonetheless I suppose your efforts deserve some kind of reward!”
  • “I sit next to Dave and I can vouch for the fact that this is all his own hair. All 17 strands of mo.”
  • “not too impressive on day 10 – you need to try harder! mum” [thanks Mum]
  • “Looking good! you should keep the look!”
  • “Argh! No, stop it! Here’s my money…”

And the question on everyone’s (top) lips: are we going to keep them? I suspect that the answer is a resounding no. But watch this space for the post Movember news, including the final cut of what the critics are already calling “A sizzling extravaganza of 4-way simultaneous mo-growth action” (our timelapse video).

Oh, and one last thing. A massive thanks to all who have donated so far and a huuuge thankyou to you. Yes you. You haven’t donated yet, but it’s clear to see that the e-mo-tion of this final day is too much, and you’re reaching for your wallet and pushing your mouse towards this link:

https://www.movember.com/uk/donate/your-details/team_id/13289/

By Dan | Posted in Cool stuff | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

24 hours to start a new business?

November 29, 2009 – 8:13 pm

At 12:00 on Thursday 26 November 09, an auction was posted on eBay listing a business for sale that hadn’t even been conceived yet.  At the same time, the White October team along with our friends from Nonsense and Hutchhouse sat down together in a Soho basement and were told that they had 24 hours to brainstorm, brand, build and launch this new business.

This was an experiment that we had decided to undertake after a “what if…” conversation in the pub between myself and Robbie Greatrex of Nonsense.  We had no idea what would happen, but were confident that if we put our team of high calibre people in a room together for 24 hours, something impressive would be sure to emerge on the other side.

The day was documented on www.24hour-startup.com with a live video stream playing constantly on the home page.  Visitors to the site saw us gather around, debate ideas, vote for our favourites, plan our development, create a brand, conceive a marketing strategy, eat pizza and cake, pull our hair out, high five, and in the case of Ben, Creative Director of Hutchhouse, sleep.

News spread quickly on Twitter with so many people talking about our venture, the term “24hourstartup” was one of the most popular words being tweeted about in the UK.

Team meeting

One of many technical meetings

The idea that we settled on (2 hours into the 24) was a website that allowed customers to search for products based on a colour.  The site would take product feeds from affiliate schemes and analyse the text and images to extract colour data for each project to allow them to be searched by colour.

One of the biggest challenges we faced was the image analysis to determine colours.  It was with only a few hours to go, and after about 20 hours of non-stop work by Rich, that we finally got this working and plugged into our test site.

Finally, after 24 hours of hard work and collaboration, at 11:59 on 27th of November 2009, we switched on our finished site, DrHue.com (do you see what we’ve done there?!) for the World to see, while we left to celebrate in the pub.

I’m incredibly proud of what me managed to come up with in such a short time : a fully functional and viable business, brilliant in its simplicity.  At the time of writing the business is up to $510 on eBay, which is pleasing to see.  But the result of the auction is not really what this has all been about : it was an opportunity for us to put ourselves to the test, to be ambitious and daring, and give our customers and others around the World an intimate insight into how we work as well as what we’re capable of.

Would we do it again?… we’ll get back to you on that once we’ve caught up on a bit more sleep…

By Dave | Posted in Uncategorised | Comments (0)

We’re all off on a secret adventure

November 26, 2009 – 8:49 am

The White October design and development team is converging in London for a top secret activity today.

What we know is this:

  • It starts at midday
  • It takes 24 hours
  • We’ll have food and drink, but no sleep
  • We need computers
  • The people involved are all on this twitter list

And, er, that’s it. Dave knows more but he’s keeping it under his hat. Doubtless we’ll be updating some kind of blog, whether it’s this one or elsewhere. We’ll keep you updated.

By Dan | Posted in Uncategorised | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Movember day 25

November 25, 2009 – 6:39 pm

We’re within a whisker of the finish now. Here come the bros:

Movember day 25

I can’t speak for the other chaps, but mine feels like its stabilised a bit now. But stabilised in a state where it itches like mad and looks absolutely terrible. Surely only the addition of bad aviators from Boots could make me look any more of a fool.

We’ve started debating shave off times and tactics already. The general consensus is that the 1st of December is when they’ve got to go. Rich seems keenest to ditch, asserting that “12.01am monday night/tuesday morning” is when his ‘tache meets its maker.

The mo bros will be converging in London for the first all-White-October-Mo-Bro-meetup tomorrow. As well as admiring each others mos and parading them proudly around the city, we’ll also be doing some kind of secret activity (I would imagine we’ll be blogging more about that here or somewhere else once we know what on earth is going on…).

Oh, and here’s another one of those mo over time videos that we’re still working on. Here are my first 20 days:

If you’ve been following along but haven’t yet donated, now’s the time:

https://www.movember.com/uk/donate/your-details/team_id/13289/

And stay tuned for the big mo finale in 5 days…

By Dan | Posted in Cool stuff | Comments (1)

Simple shorten url using bit.ly and php

November 23, 2009 – 3:10 pm

Inspired by the simple tweet to twitter function by Fabian Potencier I have built a stupidly simple url shorter for bit.ly. Something you are probably going to want to do if you are sending tweets via PHP.

function shorten($url, $login, $apikey)
{
  $api_url = "http://api.bit.ly/shorten?version=2.0.1&
                    longUrl=".urlencode($url)."&login=".$login."&
                    apiKey=".$apikey;
  $ret = file_get_contents($api_url);
  $data = json_decode($ret);
  if($data instanceof stdClass && property_exists($data, "errorCode") && $data->errorCode==0)
  {
    foreach($data->results as $result)
    {
      if(isset($result->shortUrl))
      {
        return $result->shortUrl;
      }
    }
  }
  return $url;
}

In the application where I am using this function I have defined the login name and api key as constants, so you can do away with 2 function calls.

Also handily it returns the original url if bit.ly fails.

By John | Posted in Web development, tech | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Movember day 20

November 20, 2009 – 6:06 pm

So we’re past half way, the end is in sight and the mo bros are looking pretty bad-ass.

20-days-blog

There’s been some discussion over the gap in the middle of some of our mos. Most notably mine. Apparently it’s a known style but I think it’s just rubbish. Maybe I should refer to what is surely the best mustache reference found so far: The Complete Ukulele Guide to the Moustaches of the World.

We’re getting more comfortable out and about now, striding forth with our mos thust proudly aloft. Dave even took his to a multi-Michelin starred restaurant where, as it turned out, it was right at home.

And some mo themed merchandise arrived at White October Towers this week. The favourite has to be the “White Movember Flocked ‘Mo’ Shirt” (that’s a mighty long URL) with its beautiful textured velvety mos. Mmm.

So, with only 10 days to go until “the big mo”, now is the perfect time to sponsor us if you haven’t already:

https://www.movember.com/uk/donate/your-details/team_id/13289/

And don’t forget to join in with the Movember, Mo Madness playlist fun. It’s the craze that’s quite literally not sweeping the nation.

By Dan | Posted in Cool stuff, Friday Fun | Comments (0)