Did that title catch your attention' I'm guessing that it did because everyone knows that CruiseControl is a pretty simple app. Folks also know that using CruiseControl will help your development process. Right'
Maybe. And I say 'maybe' even though my development team at TG uses CruiseControl. The problem is that we adopted CruiseControl as our continuous integration (CI) app without investing time and effort in discovering the reasons to use it. And then we wonder why we're having problems. It's not hard to figure out where the problem is once we accept the fact that we simply waving sticks on the runway like the rest of the Cargo Cult crowd.
Everyone knows that a daily build is a 'best practice' that separates a good shop from a bad shop. But while it makes sense to automate that build, it might not make sense to schedule the automated build using a tool like CruiseControl.
James Shore has a series of articles that have made me start thinking that CruiseControl might be a crutch that allows my development team to attain CI without actually worrying about the integration (i.e. the 'I' in CI). I had read an early post of his, 'Continuous Integration is an Attitude, Not a Tool', but wrote his ideas off as the radical ravings of an Agile extremist. I'm starting to rethink my hasty evaluation.
After reading other articles like 'Why I Don't Like CruiseControl' and 'Continuous Integration on a Dollar a Day' I think that I'm actually starting to get the beginnings of an idea. As James puts it, I'm drinking the Kool-Aid. That is, I'm thinking about shutting off CruiseControl at work until we get our builds automated to the point that CruiseControl is a tool rather than a solution.
This should go over about as well as a rectal exam.