05 Mar 2009

Firefox Hudson Build Monitor add-on

2 minutes | 407 words

MOZILLA: READ THIS!

To Mozilla, You should upgrad ethe Hudson Build Monitor Plugin so that users don’t have to create add-on accounts just to download. Cliffano’s customer support and product are top of the line.

Explanation: I have started using Hudson as my Continous Integraton server at work and still setting it up for custom interaction with Git. I have used CruiseControl.NET and TeamCity extensively in the past and both have tray tools. Well, I found HudsonTracker, but it wouldn’t work for me because I’m using Basic HTTP Auth with my Hudson instance.

I then found the Firefox Hudson Build Monitor plugin, written by Cliffano Subagio (firefox developer account and blog), but again, same problem. I decided to issue a ticket with the Firefox plugin.

Within a short time (couple of days), Cliffano responded with a new version to test the HTTP Authentication against.

I uninstalled the old version just to make sure of no conflict and then I right-clicked the xpi file and said to open with Firefox. It installed without issue and showed the butler in the firefox status bar:

You can right-click him and get the preferences menu:

There are 5 tabs: 1.Feeds - where you put your RSS feed URL to your hudson dashboard

2. Display - designate some UI elements (# of builds, what to show on status bar when collapsed, color indicators [Hudson uses blue for successful builds for some reason. Can choose green here for us Red/Green guys/gals], etc)

3. Notification - designate how you will be notified of certain events

4. Network - username and password for HTTP Authentication

5. Misc - designate how to open page (new tab, new firefox window) and enable debugging

NOTE: Whenever I added my RSS feed from my Hudson dashboard to the tool (I’m using Firefox on a Mac) the URL would not stay. Cliffano had a solution for this: 1. Go to your Hudson dashboard

2. Right click your RSS feed of choice (I prefer “for all” which is https://hudson.mydomain.com/rssAll):

3. Choose “Add Link To Hudson Build Monitor”

4. Name the URL:

And VOILA! it stayed in my preferences. Most users won’t have to go this route, but instead of typing out the url and just a name, it is easier.

Thank you Cliffano. Hopefully Mozilla will upgrade the plugin and stop requiring people to create accounts to download it.

Cliffano has stated that a 1.0 version will be coming soon. Enjoy!