Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
It makes sense to use a CI server when performing CI. Of course, you
can create your own tool or perform integrations manually; however,
these days there are many excellent tools on the market that provide
valuable features and the capability to extend those features. There-
fore, it's unnecessary to create your own CI server. However, if you
were to write your own server, you would probably want to incorpo-
rate many of these features.
• Poll for changes in the version control repository on a specified
time interval.
• Perform certain actions on a scheduled basis, such as hourly or
daily.
• Identify a “quiet period” during which no integration builds are
performed for the project.
• Support for different build scripting tools including command-
line tools such as Rake, make, Ant, or NAnt.
• Send e-mails to the concerned parties.
• Display a history of previous builds.
• Display a dashboard that is Web accessible so that everyone can
review integration build information.
• Support multiple version control systems for your different
projects.
And the list goes on. Most CI servers have already implemented
these features. There is sure to be a tool that fits your needs and devel-
opment environment. CruiseControl, Luntbuild, Continuum, Pulse,
and Gauntlet are a few of the tools that you can use to perform CI.
Appendix B explores and evaluates the various CI tools on the market
at the time this topic was published.
So, should you use a CI server, manual integrations, or a combina-
tion? We will leave it up to you. We obviously favor using a CI server.
However, there are good reasons for manually performing integrations,
especially given the minimal tool support for preventing broken code
from entering the repository.
