Q:

Continuous Integration with Mercurial, MSBuild, ASP.NET

I recently moved from Subversion to Mercurial. I'd like to setup Continuous Integration (CI), but I'm unsure how a DVCS CI differs from an Subversion CI implementation.  
I'd like to hear how others have implemented their DVCS CI implementations and what tool sets were used.

A:

There is not much difference between the way you would setup a subversion CI or a Mercurial CI. Typically, the both provide pre and post commit hooks for you to work with. From the perspective of a CI tool, this is the same. Almost any CI tool, has support for all these version control system to monitor changes and based on the changes, trigger a build / test cycle and notify the results via web, mail etc.
I would suggest BuildBot, because I have personally used it recently and works with both subversion and Mercurial. It also works on all platform as it is written in Python. Though MS has some very powerful tools for CI which exploits the platform, if you use all microsoft tools.
Buildbot is easy to learn and use. 

http://buildbot.net/trac

Not as self plugin, but I wrote a brief summary of information on my blog yesterday !

http://pyfunc.blogspot.com/2010/09/using-buildbot-for-continuos.html

Check out some of the features of Microsoft CI tool, I have always found the level of details daunting and increasingly the tools themselves demand more time.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181710(v=vs.90).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms364045(VS.80).aspx
http://michielovereem.posterous.com/book-review-continuous-integration-in-net-by

Of course, there should be a central repository to which all changes are finally pushed and where you can integrate with a CI tool.

