Build Hotspots is (or rather will be) a CI/CD visualisation tool that analyses build data and shows the builds that are run most often and how long they take in a graphical way; some people have described this as a "4D representation of the build system."

I like @AbrahamMarin Build-Driven Architecture, using auto-generated 4D dependency graphs. Thanks to @skillsmatter pic.twitter.com/0i4AvgfrWe

— michael aubert (@michaelaubertfr) May 21, 2015

To be fair, it's not automated yet, that's what this project is about. To know more about what Build Hotspots can be used for, watch this short presentation (it's about 10 minutes only) that I gave at Devoxx UK 2015. If you have more time and want to know more about its motivation and potential, check this webcast I gave for O'Reilly (requires free registration).

There are currently two ways to run BuildHotspots:

• Jenkins Connector: the application will prompt you to indicate the URL of your Jenkins instance. Run the class JenkinsBasedBuildHotspotsApplication.
• File Connector: used mostly for testing since you'll to provide an XML file (there are samples in the resources folder); you're free to use it nonetheless. Run the class FileBasedBuildHotspotsApplication.

Sure thing, here you go:

Download a copy of BuildHotspots

git clone https://github.com/quiram/build-hotspots.git

Build it

cd build-hotspots
mvn clean verify

Run it

cd target
java -cp buildhotspots-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar com.github.quiram.buildhotspots.visualisation.JenkinsBasedBuildHotspotsApplication
# Or use the File Connector class if that's your preference

Yeah, you're probably right. There are three things to take into account though:

1. I haven't used JavaFX before. Nor Swing. Nor I have any experience programming graphical interfaces.
2. I have very little time to work on this.
3. This application is still very young, at the moment I'm favouring new features over stability.

So, if you find it frustrating, please be patient. Or even better, please help :)

This section is a bit of a brain dump, my initials ideas for Build Hotspots. Now I use it as a sort of task tracker (I know issues are probably better than this, but I started with a text list and I haven't taken the time to migrate that to issues yet).

• CI clients should be able to:

  • Obtain list of all build configurations -- DONE
  • Obtain upstream / downstream dependencies of a build configuration -- DONE
  • Obtain date of a particular build run
  • Obtain oldest available build run
  • Obtain size duration of a particular build run
  • Obtain total number of build runs since records began for a particular build configuration

• CI clients to support

  • Jenkins Client -- IN PROGRESS
  • TeamCity Client

• Data processing

  • Collect all builds
  • Visitor pattern?
    • Apply colour: get most frequent build, assign frequency to MAX, then least frequent build, assign frequency as MIN, then assign colour to all builds according to relative frequency. Assuming a gradient blue -> red, then the colour for a build wit frequency F will be: colour = blue * (MAX - F) / (MAX - MIN) + red * (F - MIN) / (MAX - MIN)

• Visualisation (JavaFX?)

  • Graph DAG with colours and sizes -- IN PROGRESS
  • Hover to display build configuration name -- DONE (through right-click)

• Container (would have to be done in JS, not sure about integration)

  • Chrome plugin
  • Mozilla plugin

• Options (to be applied through config file, through plugin options, etc.)

  • Filter build configurations to be shown in the graph. -- DONE
    • Instead of selecting all of them, select only a few and then add an option to include upstream / downstream from those. -- DONE
  • Option to use build run frequency directly (assuming all build data is available) or through oldest available builds (assuming it's not)
  • Auto-detect CI client, simply indicate the URL and guess what the client is from the response.