
Rate my startup: hosted continuous integration for Python - Xixi
I'd like to get some early feedback about my new startup, ShiningPanda: Hosted Continuous Integration for Python.<p>http://www.shiningpanda.com<p>The goal is to provide a dead simple web service so that you can build, test and deploy your various Python projects, without having to care about setting up servers, databases, build tools, reporting, etc. This includes of course web projects based on django, web.py, werkzeug, etc., but also the associated functional tests based on Selenium.<p>We are planning to enter into private beta soon, so if you would like to participate, please let us know. If you feel like telling us about what your dream integration service would be like, let us know too, we really want to hear about what our (future) users want!<p>Thanks in advance!
Alexis
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Lewisham
The thing you will really need to push on in your message is ease-of-use and
functionality. Continuous Integration is one of those things that you mention
to most teams and they raise an eyebrow and go "Why would I do that? Our tests
only take 30 seconds." For the teams that know how CI would help them, they're
already running a Hudson instance, and will need a compelling reason to
switch.

I think you'll definitely need to start talking about the sort of things you
get with Hudson plugins: particularly reporting, static code analysis etc.
above and beyond simply building and running tests.

I'm a big believer in CI. I work with Hudson every once in a while, and the
devs on that project are very good indeed. It's definitely an enterprise
hammer which doesn't necessarily make it too easy to crack small nuts
(hudson.rb alleviates much as you don't need a Java web server, but you still
need some private server somewhere), and more people running CI can only be a
net benefit.

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jreposa
I'm having a hard time understanding what role ShiningPanda would play in our
deployment process. Is this a hosted Capistrano type service, but with
testing? Or, is it more like Heroku but with EC2/GAE/etc?

Something like "it's the [Heroku|or whatever] for Python" would be much easier
to understand how to utilize your offering.

Or, is there really no other comparable service?

Linked: <http://www.shiningpanda.com>

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old-gregg
He said very clearly: it is a continuous integration server. I don't
understand where your analogies with Heroku are coming from. Here:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration>

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jreposa
Gotcha. It's my mistake. I was thinking of Continuous Deployment. CI seems
like something I should be doing though.

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madflo
If I understand correctly your message, my buildbot master server and
instances could be replaced by your service.

Well, I'm interested.

I'm building a SaaS application for customers in the health care industry.
It's a Django project with about a dozen apps. Each app has its own test
suite.

I would be interested in the following :

\- ability to get some shiny output visualization,

\- running some web hooks when a test suite is going nuts,

\- ability to customize the environnement for each app (which libs...),

\- ability to build swig modules and to link them against binary libs (32bits)
before running some tests

~~~
franck
Web hooks when the build or tests fail would indeed be a great addition to the
service.

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hsuresh
Sorry for the shameless plug, but we are working on a similar service for Ruby
projects -> <http://www.buildcop.com>

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Argorak
The Ruby world had something like this, called RunCodeRun. They closed down
and wrote down a nice list of things on how it didn't work. How do you see
those problems?

[http://blog.runcoderun.com/post/463439385/saying-goodbye-
to-...](http://blog.runcoderun.com/post/463439385/saying-goodbye-to-
runcoderun)

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jnoller
This looks pretty awesome, and I think it fills a needed gap in the ecosystem.
If I had a web app to publicly host, I'd definitely be giving this a try!

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roblund
Looks like a cool idea. I am definitely interested to see your interface, and
how you schedule your builds. Having a reliable continuous integration system
setup is super important if you hope to keep a large test suite up-to-date and
relevant. I also really dislike configuring servers (like a CI server), so it
is nice to have a hosted service that would handle a lot of that stuff for me.

~~~
agentultra
Having a CI system that is easy to maintain, has granular reporting at regular
intervals of the build process, and is a breeze to write tests for is golden.

A hosted service would be a good first step in this direction.

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recampbell
I'm helping to build a similar service at <http://cloudbees.com>. It's
basically a Hudson as a Service, so you can build pretty much whatever you
want. Hudson build machines are dynamically attached to your Hudson master,
and removed when the build is done. We plan to support most Hudson plugins.

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olivier75
ShiningPanda aims to be a little bit more than an Hudson in the cloud. It
provides some built-in Python environments to run your tests, and allows you
to easily plug some web 2.0 reports instead of console 1.0 outputs (coverage,
code analysis, ...). If you need some extra dependences to run your tests
(such as databases...), it's as easy as a click. And with a continuous
deployment service, it's really a friend that helps you to safely send code
(by testing it) from your source repository to your production site.

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dustingetz
presumably you already know the business model. Do you intend to be a serious
host? Do you understand the challenges of being "rock solid" (quoted from
Heroku.com)? This is the type of business that I doubt few kids in a basement
can put together--It seems that you need a real team, with real credentials
and real funding. What do you think?

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3lectricsheep
Hello there, my first post here :)

I understand your point, but i think that people need to start building
prototypes, minimum viable products, and then (if they are lucky enough) will
have all the fun to scale their startup.

Talking about fundings at this stage is a bit premature, in my opinion.

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dustingetz
imo its not really a startup in the HN sense of "find and validate a business
model"--the business model is known, so imo its much more about skill of
execution than iterating prototypes.

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photon_off
Iterating prototypes is execution.

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moron4hire
Couple this with a DHTML editor and automatic revision control (new revision
on every save) and I would love it. DropBox has been great for hacking client-
side apps across multiple machines, but for web apps it's kind of a chore.

You know, Google Docs + some sort of web-based VIM + CodePad.org would be the
bees knees.

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Xixi
That sounds like an interesting idea, but I think it would be quite of a
stretch to include this in the scope of ShiningPanda.

We are really focused on the testing part of software development. How you
write the code is up to you, or to another startup...

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rfinn
I'm actually working on this idea right now.

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markitechtMA
This is great. My friend and I were thinking of building something simple for
GitHub -> GAE continuous deployment, but this expanded feature set is really
the right path i think.

I signed up and am hoping to hear more, shoot me an email, I'd love to be in
the loop and give more feedback as you roll out.

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franck
What you had in mind sounds a lot like DryDrop in case you're interested :
<http://drydrop.binaryage.com>

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faust1
i am not into programming but can give you suggestion regarding design
element. consider changing the "panda" in orange at banner area. just my
personal observation. otherwise your site looks very good.

~~~
Xixi
Thanks for the feedback on design elements, it's important too! What color
would you put the "panda" in? Green like the "shining"?

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atuladhar
Looks pretty good. Are there any plans to expand this beyond Python?

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Xixi
Not anytime soon, we need to get Python up and running first! From there we
will decide. We might look into Ruby, but don't expect anything soon.

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cool-RR
Sounds very exciting, looking forward to your private beta!

