It's been a while since the topic of Continuous Integration has come up. There was a post back in 2009 about it, that's 4 years ago and alot has happened in Umbraco land since then.

http://our.umbraco.org/forum/developers/api-questions/9730-Umbraco-and-Continuous-Integration

I'm looking to implement a CI workflow, my question is what are other developers using? what works and what doesn't work?

At the moment I have identified the following technolgies:

Version Control System - GIT

GIT Client - Smart Git/Hg

Deployment + External Repository Host - Beanstalk

Continuous Integration Server - TeamCity

The solution am considering involves building a web-front end to automate the creation of repos (Dev | Staging | Live) on Beanstalk (using it's REST api) and automatically creating the projects in TeamCity (again using REST API).

Setting up a project

1. Login to web-front end – this will be built to hook into Beanstalk / Teamcity.
2. Create a new project.
3.  Input project details.
4.  Automated set-up of repositories in Beanstalk with REST API.
5.  One repository created with several branches - one per environment Main branch - (Dev, Staging, Live).
6.  Automated set-up of the project on the build-server (TeamCity) with REST API.
7. Automatically set the deployment details - allows deployment on commit.
8.  Clone the repository with SmartGit/hg to a local folder.

Small code changes

1. Work on the Dev branch locally - make change in working copy.
2. Commit change with SmartGit/Hg.
3. Commit detected by TeamCity.
4. Runs a Build - tests –  then reports the findings.
5. All good - automated deploy to Dev environment (web hook - or commit message).

New features

1.  Create new branch with SmartGit/Hg (derived from Dev).
2.  Work - multiple commits and builds.
3.  Run final build tests.
4.  All good - merge to Dev repository.
5.  Automated deployment to Dev environment.
   

Pushing changes to Staging / Live

1. Merge Dev branch to Staging / Live.
2. Commit changes + push.
3.  All good - automated deployment to the correct environment. (web hook)

Alot of this is based on the hard-work done by Anthony Dang and his great series of Automation Sparta posts. Comments welcome, especially if you have a similar process, or a process that works well and are willing to share.

Thanks,

Matt