Ramrod is a central command center for multiple Continuous Integration instances. It acts as a central management point for your code base. You can notify Ramrod from your SCM server and it tells its agents about it. The agents then fetch the code, build the software, run the tests and inform Ramrod about the result.
My master's thesis project includes a software which has to run on Windows, Unix/Linux and the iPhone. I definitely wanted to have an easy-to-use build environment. However the build machines include Windows laptops, an old iMac and a FreeBSD server. Not all of these are suitable for a whole CI installation and I wanted to be able to easily add new machines.
Ramrod exposes a simple REST-like API for build notifications. If your Ramrod instance is protected by HTTP Basic Auth, the corresponding credentials have to be used.
Ramrod can be notified via a simple POST receive URL.
POST http://ramrod.domain/:projectname/build
A URL for every agent can be configured. Ramrod will then do a HTTP POST to this URL for every agent.
Simple custom agents can easily be created for use with Ramrod. They just have to accept HTTP POST on a URL to build the project. After the build (and tests), the agents have to notify Ramrod with a PUT to the following URL:
PUT http://ramrod.domain/:project/notify
The body of the notification should contain the following data:
token = token
success = true/false
name = name of the updating agent
token contains the corresponding authorization token and success defines
whether the build was successful or not. name contains the name of the
updating agent.
CIJoe as an agent
The simple and powerful cijoe can be easily used as an agent. You can tell him
to build via POST to the base URL. For callback notification, you have to
implement the hooks .git/hooks/build-failed and .git/hooks/build-worked to
contain a shell script which does a
curl -X PUT -d"token=bla&success=true&name=foo" http://ramrod.domain.
Integrity as an agent
Integrity can also be used as an agent. It incorporates an HTTP notifier which can be used as a callback. However token based authorization does not work with integrity.
- Notification system
- Nicer design
- Tests
- Edit agents
- Authentication
Just clone the repository and run the executable:
git clone http://github.com/mrtazz/ramrod.git
bundle install
./bin/ramrod
For dependencies see Gemfile.
If you want to contribute to ramrod:
- Fork the project.
- Make your feature addition or bug fix.
- Add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.
- Commit, do not mess with version
- Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.
Ramrod has a simple structure, as it doesn't build anything itself. You should be able to easily deploy it to a hosting provider like Heroku.