Tactical Continuous Integration

Abstract

The practice of Continuous Integration facilitates early visibility into the development process by regularly conducting software builds, thus integrating disparate software pieces earlier than later, which often times minimizes the interval between when a defect is coded and when it is discovered. Often times though, Continuous Integration is thought of as a tool, which leads to a false sense of ease when it comes to adopting a
Continuous Integration process.

This tutorial will walk students through a series of exercises on a fictional Java project where an automated build system is created that facilitates compilation, testing, inspection, and deployment. This build system is then plugged into a CI server and students will code a series of features using Agile techniques like developer testing, which will ultimately demonstrate how a Continuous Integration process reduces risk and improves software quality. Students will learn how to set up and define an automated build system that includes running tests, inspections, and deploying software assets; moreover, students will learn how to setup a Continuous Integration server and configure it with an SCM. Students will also learn Agile techniques like developer testing.

Given the automated nature of continuous integration spawned builds, software teams can now start to look at their build process as something more useful than a simple compile and test process.

Presenter: Andrew Glover

An established expert in automated testing frameworks and tools, Andy Glover is a published author for multiple online publications including IBM's DeveloperWorks, InfoQ, JavaWorld, and O'Reilly's ONJava, Dev2Dev, and ONLamp portals. A frequent speaker at conferences around the US, Andy is the co-author of "Java Testing Patterns", "Groovy in Action", and "Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Re- ducing Risk". He blogs frequently at testearly.com and thediscoblog.com.

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