CDash:FAQ

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General information and availability

What is CDash?

CDash is an open source, web-based software testing server.

CDash aggregates, analyzes and displays the results of software testing processes submitted from clients located around the world. Developers depend on CDash to convey the state of a software system, and to continually improve its quality.

CDash is a part of a larger software process that integrates Kitware's CMake, CTest, and CPack tools, as well as other external packages used to design, manage and maintain large scale software systems. Good examples of a CDash are the CMake quality dashboard and the VTK quality dashboard.

• CDash's main website is located at www.cdash.org
• CDash's main dashboard for Kitware's supported open-source projects is located at www.cdash.org/CDash

How to I install CDash?

See CDash:Installation.

Can I customize CDash?

Yes. CDash is written using XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language), therefore you can customize it fairly easily.

• Individual pages can be customized by putting the corresponding .xsl files in the local directory of the main CDash installation.
• Header menus can be customized directly. Just make sure the header.xsl as the following lines:

  <xsl:include href="headscripts.xsl"/>
  <xsl:call-template name="headscripts"/>

Can I create private and public projects on the same server?

Yes. CDash supports mixing private and public projects via user login. If you have very sensitive project you might want to setup another CDash with restricted access (via .htaccess or other mechanisms).

Two things to keep in mind when creating private projects in CDash:

1. RSS feeds for private project are not created (this might be a configuration option)
2. The backup directory which is by default in CDash/backup is still writing the XML files. It is recommended to limit the access of the backup directory via a .htaccess on the web server or move the backup directory to another location (outside of the web server root)

Why aren't I getting email notifications of build/test failures?

See CDash:BuildEmailNotification.

PHP cannot parse my submission

If the XML files to process is too big you might get an error like this from apache or PHP:

  PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 16777216 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 41 bytes) in /srv/www/html/CDash/common.php on line 295

Make sure you increase the memory limit as well as the execution time in your php.ini file.

 max_execution_time = 30;
 max_input_time = 60;
 memory_limit = 200M;

LDAP doesn't find cn (common name)

CDash uses the cn (common name) entry from the LDAP database to automatically register user in CDash from LDAP. On certain configurations the common name entry is not made available for reading and therefore CDash fails. For instance in /etc/openldap/slapd.conf

 access to attrs=userPassword,userPKCS12,cn
       by self write
       by * auth

Removing the cn entry from the access line authorizes CDash to see the entry.

I'm not using CMake/CTest, can I still use CDash?

Yes, CDash expects the XML files to be sent via HTTP PUT to "http://yourserver.org/CDash/submit.php?project=projectname".

I found a bug, what should I do?

Finding bugs is the first step to improving CDash's quality. Please report all bugs on the online bug tracking system.