Albacore is intended to be a professional quality suite of Rake tasks to help automate the process of building a .NET based system. All tasks are built using a test-first approach through rspec, and all tests are included in the Albacore gem.
If you would like to install the current, stable release of Albacore, you can do so easily through the Gemcutter gem server. Follow these simple instructions and you will be good to go.
Step 1: Setup Gemcutter as a gem source
gem source -a http://gemcutter.org
(note: you only need to do this once for any given computer that is going to install gems from gemcutter.)
Step 2: Install the Albacore gem
gem install albacore
(note: as of v0.0.7, the "albacore" gem is spelled with a lowercase "a".)
If you would like to install the latest source code for Albacore, and get all the new features and functionality (possibly in an unstable form), you can manually build and install the Albacore gem. Follow these simple instructions and you will be good to go.
Step 1: Clone Albacore
Use your Github account to fork Albacore, or clone it directly from my public clone URL.
git clone git://github.com/derickbailey/Albacore.git Albacore
Step 2: Build the gem
In your local clone of Albacore, use the jeweler rake tasks to build the latest version of the Albacore code into a gem.
rake jeweler:gemspec
rake jeweler:build
this will produce an 'albacore-#.#.#.gem' file in the 'pkg' folder, where '#.#.#' is the version number. For example 'albacore-0.0.7.gem'.
Step 3: Install the gem
After building the gem, you can install it from your local file system.
gem install -l pkg/albacore-#.#.#.gem
where '#.#.#' is the version number of the gem. For example 'albacore-0.0.7.gem'
After installing Albacore, you only need to
require 'albacore'
in your rakefile. This will allow you to use the tasks that Albacore includes.
desc "Run a sample build using the MSBuildTask"
msbuild do |msb|
msb.properties :configuration => :Debug
msb.targets :Clean, :Build
msb.solution = "spec/support/TestSolution/TestSolution.sln"
end
Beyond the simple example, check out the Albacore Wiki for detailed instructions on how to use the built in tasks and their options.
If you'd like to get involved with the Albacore framework, we have a discussion group over at google: AlbacoreDev
Anyone can fork the main repository and submit patches, as well. And lastly, the wiki and issues list are also open for additions, edits, and discussion.
Many thanks for contributions to Albacore are due (in alphabetical order):
- Andreone: Significant Wiki contributions, questions and contributions on the google group
- Ben Hall: Primary contributor. SSH, SFTP, ZipDirectory, Rename, YAML auto config, Wiki pages, and many other great additions
- Brian Donahue: Inspiration and initial code for the ExpandTemplates task
- Hibri Marzook: the PLink and NDepend tasks
- James Gregory: the Docu task
- Kevin Colyar: Testing and updating of MSBuild to work with Cygwin
- Mark Wilkins: VB.NET Language Generator For The AssemblyInfo Task
- Sean Biefeld: MSpecTestRunner for NCoverConsole
- Steven Harman: Finding some wicked bugs, patching nunit test runner, and the nant task