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CruiseSaver: The CruiseControl ScreenSaver
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CruiseSaver is a screen saver that shows the current status of all of
your CruiseControl projects. It is built as a Java SaverBean. As a
SaverBean, it installs, configures, and runs like any native screen
saver under Windows or XScreenSaver on Unix, Linux, and Mac.

The idea was born to have a better "Ambient Orb" (search Google if
you're not familiar with the orb) to show the status of all of our
projects on the LCD hung on the wall. We've been using CruiseSaver at
work since February 2007.

The screen saver uses JMX or RSS to communicate with
CruiseControl. RSS requires no limits to your CruiseControl
installation. Though it does provides less feedback. The JMX
communication requires CruiseControl version 2.7.3 or higher. This
version includes a new JMX method that I needed.


Quick Start
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You have two options for connecting to your CruiseControl build loop:

    * JMX (Java Management Extensions) -- provides comple build
      status: building, queued, success, failure

    * RSS (Really Simple Syndication) -- provides only build success
      or failure

JMX Configuration
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The JMX configuration provides complete build status feedback. The
orbs in the screen saver will show you when they are building and if
they are queued to build (as well as how deep). If the screen saver is
running, visible in yor teams lab for all to see, this queued depth is
great feedback to realize you builds have run into trobule.
Make sure that cruisecontrol.sh starts the engine with "-jmxport 8000
-rmiport <your-rmi-port>. That last <your-rmi-port> is what port
you'll configure CruiseSaver to connect upon. The default is 1099.


RSS Configuration
---------------

The RSS feed is already coming out of your CruiseControl build
loop. No configuration changes are needed. You can see the RSS image
at the bottom of the main page of the build results web site. This RSS
feed however only announces build results, not the building and queued
states. On the upside, this is backwards compatable to older version of
CruiseControl. I'm not sure how far back, but you should be fine to at
least 2.6. Just configure CruiseSaver to connect upon that same http
port (the defauilt is 8080) as the build results web site.


Windows
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Windows is easy. Download the win32 zip and extract the contents to
your windows system32 directory. You'll know you're in the right
directory because there will be other *.scr files there. This release
includes a cruisesaver.scr and the two necessary JAR files. The README
in the zip will tell you these same instructions.


XScreenSaver (Linux, etc)
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I have not spent as much time as I should have on the XScreenSaver
compile. Contact me if you are insterested. It will work. I have
reports that it compiled and ran fine on Fedora with a 5.x version of
XScreenSaver thanks to our updated versions of saverbeans-*.jar.

Running as an XScreenSaver "hack" is a bit more work. You need to run
make. Download and extract the unix zip. The main dependency to make
CruiseSaver (really any Java SaverBean) is XScreenSaver. I have an
env.sh script that might help you with the environment needed to make.