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Friends: Don's Proxy
CruiseSaver is a screen saver that shows the current status of all of your CruiseControl
projects. It is built as a Java SaverBean. As
a SaverBean, it installs, configures, and runs like any native screen saver under Windows or
XScreenSaver on Unix, Linux, and Mac.
The idea was born to have a better "Ambient Orb" (search Google if you're not familiar with
the orb) to show the status of all of our projects on the LCD hung on the wall. We've been
using CruiseSaver at work since February 2007.
The screen saver uses JMX or RSS to communicate with CruiseControl. RSS requires no limits to your CruiseControl installation. Though it does provides less feedback. The JMX communication requires CruiseControl version 2.7.3 or higher. This version includes a new JMX method that I needed.
This image shows two servers. The default CruiseControl connectfour project and a "demo mode" server of a few projects -- AAARRG! All those failed builds! There are more screenshots.
You have two options for connecting to you CruiseControl build loop:
The JMX configuration provides complete build status feedback. The orbs in the screen saver
will show you when they are building and if they are queued to build (as well as how deep).
If the screen saver is running, visible in yor teams lab for all to see, this queued depth
is great feedback to realize you builds have run into trobule.
Make sure that cruisecontrol.sh starts the engine with "-jmxport 8000 -rmiport <your-rmi-port>.
That last <your-rmi-port> is what port you'll configure CruiseSaver to connect upon.
The default is 1099.
The RSS feed is already coming out of your CruiseControl build loop. No configuraiton changes
are needed. You can see the RSS image 
at the bottom of the main page of the build results web site. This RSS feed however only
announces build resuilts, not the building and queued states. On the up side, this is backwards
compatable to older version of CruiseControl. I'm not sure how far back, but you should be fine
to at least 2.6.
Just configure CruiseSaver to connect upon that same http port (the defauilt is 8080) as the build results web site.
Windows is easy. Download the win32 zip and extract the contents to your windows system32 directory. You'll know your in the right directory because there will be other *.scr files there. This release includes a cruisesaver.scr and the two necessary JAR files. The README in the zip will tell you these same instructions.
I have not spent as much time as I should have on the XScreenSaver compile. Contact me through my jw_mt sourceforge account if you are insterested. It will work. I have reports that it compiled and ran fine on Fedora with a 5+ version of XScreenSaver thanks to our updated versions of saverbeans-*.jar.
Running as an XScreenSaver "hack" is a bit more work. You need to run make. Download and extract the unix zip. The main dependency to make CruiseSaver (really any Java SaverBean) is XScreenSaver. I have an env.sh script that might help you with the environment needed to make.