iOS Build Maestro

Scott A. Guyer

This project is a tool that wraps the various build steps that I commonly take when generating iPhone builds. At a high level, it starts with a build specification that is a YAML document. This tool will then operation on that build spec to handle things like:

1. Tag various SCM elements from specified source trees
2. Optionally checkout those new tags to a working area
3. Make any more checkouts as specified into the workspace
4. Do the build
5. Bundle up any necessary build assets
6. Publish those build assets

Why not just use Hudson/Jenkins?

I started off using those for years. But it never quite fit. Many of my concepts are similar to what you'd find in Hudson/Jenkins, but in the end, an automated build system is not a CI server. For example, we have no need watch an SVN repository for changes to automatically trigger a build and test cycle. Rather, for the automated build process, the primary objective is to remove the human element and make the rather tedious build process bearable and repeatable.

Secondly, I was looking for an excuse to do more ruby development, and even dabble with a DSL.

So what do these build specs look like?

Might be the easiest way to understand how this works, is to see an example build spec.

---

build_name 'supercool-project'
build_version '2.0.5.0'

# Set some global params required to access your SVN server
# PARAMS:
# user - required
# (optional) - password. If you don't specify, we will look in the mac keychain using 
#     a generic password and the given userid	
set_svn_user 'svnuser'


# tag work - to take any other dependency projects
# will automatically checkout too
# PARAMS:
# src_root a path to the root of a SVN project that has trunk,tags,branches subdirs
# (optional) tag_name the name of the tag to create using the specified src root (default is to use the svn revision)
# (optional) a destination path to checkout to if provided (default is basename of url)	
make_tag 'http://www.svnserver.com/path/to/project/root'


# build dependencies
# dependency 'srcpath' 'dest'
dependency 	'http://www.svnserver.com/path/to/project', "project"


# now do the actual work
# the workspace will be the current working directory
# version (from above) will be passed in to the block as well
#
# You can put anything you want here, ruby, but most commonly, shell commands via...
#   %x[ cmd with params here ]
# Or perhaps better, 
#   run "cmd here"
# In the latter case, the command output is piped into a bm.log file in the workspace dir
build do |version, workspace|
	puts "BOOM: #{version}"
	run "< build it >"
end

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