Ctest/CDash workflow : deploying nightly builds

Question

I use/maintain a few CMake projects, so I started examining CTest/CDash, but there's something that I can't figure out:

Is it only made to display build/test results? (aka beautified logs)

Or : May deployment of night build binaries on a server be included in that workflow?

As much as I think that CTest is the ideal tool for testing CMake projects and showing test results, I would also like to automate the deployment of nightly builds on a web server, and I'm wondering if it's the right tool for that...

Answer 1

This is a new feature in CDash 2.0 and recent CTest, you can see an experimental example of this in use for ParaView,

http://trunk.cdash.org/index.php?project=ParaView

The CTest script that led to it is viewable as a note, for example (from that dashboard),

http://trunk.cdash.org/viewNotes.php?buildid=10381

I am planning on writing up how to use this once CDash 2.0 is fully releases if no one else gets around to it first. So, the feature is certainly there now but very new. I think it is a great feature, and plan on using it in my projects to make nightly binaries available.

Answer 2

This is rather a task, that would be performed by CMake, not by CTest or CDash. We use CMake to generate an installer image and copy it somewhere on the filesystem. You can use add_custom_target to specify such a target. Your nightly builds might then simply include this target.