There has been some talk around using physical, colored, lamps to notify build results (pragmatic automation, Carlos Sanchez, Richard Durnall, Alberto Savoia).

The idea comes from Lean Manufacturing principles developed by Toyota applied to software development. An “andon” paper lamp was a way to let other workers know there was a problem on the assembly line. The idea for builds is that while a build is running, an amber light flashes, letting other developers know not to run a build, a green light signifies the last build was completed successfully, and a red light means the build is broken and needs to be fixed.

While I’m sure it is an entertaining exercise to set this up, some simple software automation could achieve the same results, and it has obvious faults, like what if I am working from home?

Email is the de facto standard for build notification. There is a hardcoded mailing list somewhere and you get the email, even if you don’t want it, and you have to go and check your mail to receive it.

Twitter, on the other hand, puts the user in control of the notifications in true Web 2.0 fashion. Tweets are also ideal for receiving notifications via cell phone, where email is generally not. Consider the following cases:

• I can follow the build when I want, and unfollow when I want. No going to an admin to remove me from the list.
• I can turn on device updates so I get an SMS message about the result (maybe an important release is coming up), or I can turn off device updates, say, when I’m on vacation.
• I can retweet (forward) the build notification.
• You can put links in the message. Meister uploads all build logs in HTML format to a web server and we would include the link to that.

About a year ago, I used Meister with a post-build activity to Tweet the build result after a build. The activity was a simple Perl script using Net::Twitter. Let’s just say this experiment sort of fell on deaf ears.

Now I’m ready to roll with this again and you can follow my progress. I had created a Twitter account, @builds, for this purpose. In a day or two, you’ll see some tweets from that guy from one of my builds.

I’m interested in what other people have to say. Meister already uses Eclipse RCP as it’s front end, but most other build tools are still command-line and in the 1970’s. Let’s bring build management tools into the 21st century with Web 2.0 features.