CI

Continuous Integration

Development practice that requires developers to integrate code into a shared repository several times a day. Each check-in is then verified by an automated build, allowing teams to detect problems early.

By integrating regularly, you can detect errors quickly, and locate them more easily.

Benefits

• No more long and tense integrations

• Increase visibility enabling greater communication

• Catch issues early

• Less time debugging and more time adding features

• Build a solid foundation

• Stop waiting to find out if your code’s going to work

• Reduce integration problems

The practices

• Maintain a single source repository

• Automate the build

• Make your build self-testing

• Every commit should build on an integration machine

• Keep the build fast

• Test in a clone of the production environment

• Make it easy for anyone to get the latest executable version

• Everyone can see what’s happening

• Automate deployment

How to do it

• Developers check out code into their private workspaces

• When done, commit the changes to the repository

• The CI server monitors the repository and checks out changes when they occur

• The CI server builds the system and runs unit and integration tests

• The CI server releases deployable artifacts for testing

• The CI server assigns a build label to the version of the code it just built

• The CI server informs the team of the successful build

• If the build or tests fail, the CI server alerts the team

• The team fixes the issue at the earliest opportunity

• Continue to continually integrate and test throughout the project

Team responsibilities

• Check in frequently

• Don’t check in broken code

• Don’t check in untested code

• Don’t check in when the build is broken

• Don’t go home after checking in until the system builds

Tools

Jenkins

Travis

Gitlab CI