I'm a big fan of continuous integration. I've been using it since I was first introduced to it by Mike Swanson, when he put his Ambient Orb up in our office. 8 years later, and I'm still using continuous integration on every project I'm on, including any of my personal projects.

But one thing that I didn't have was a good way to monitor the builds. CCTray was OK, but it wasn't the most visible thing. BigVisibleCruise was nice, but screen real estate is at a premium. So I started looking for something I could use. The Ambient Orb was both expensive and out of stock at the same time, so it was out, and a real traffic light was a bit more room than I wanted to use. Eventually, I found a miniature traffic light from Delcom that seemed perfect.

I threw together a quick and dirty application that did nothing but check some XML from CruiseControl.NET, parse out the build status, and change which light was lit up. It was a complete hack, but it worked. When we switched to to Hudson (and then Jenkins), it continued to work because Jenkins offers a CruiseControl.NET compatible output. But then we switched on authentication, and it stopped working. And I left it that way.

Just recently, we had a situation where the build broke for a couple of days and no one noticed it. I didn't notice because the tool I was using to monitor the build wasn't visible enough. So I pulled out the old code for the traffic light monitor and got it working with authentication.

And I kept going. I added a user interface for adding and editing projects. I added a screen for monitoring the build so you don't have to have a real traffic light (pictured right). I added a system tray icon that shows the current state of builds. I added balloon tool tips when builds happen. And I came up with a bunch of ideas I'd like to do with it.

And then I made it open source.

It's still in it's infancy, and set is a little non-obvious (but getting better!), but it works to monitor builds. Now when the build breaks, a giant red light shines in my office - which I definitely can't miss! If you've been looking for a way to monitor your CI server, then you should take a look at Traffic Light.

I've set up a public Trello board that I'll be using to track features and bugs. There's two cards designated for anyone to contribute new ideas or to submit bugs. Details for the board are available on this card. And of course, if you have a feature you want, I'll accept pull requests! I am also attempting to get the project set up on CodeBetter's TeamCity CI server. I submitted my request about a week ago, but haven't heard anything yet. I don't know if I'll ever hear back or not, but if I do, I'll get links out to that as well (and probably include that as a default project in the application).

I don't expect this application to gain a ton of traction, but it's a useful utility and could be a good learning experience about running an open source project, so I'm excited about it.

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