Continuous Integration

Continuous integration is the practice of merging all developer working copies to a shared mainline on a highly frequent basis. CI mitigates merge / integration hell by merging early and often. It greatly depends on robust, automated unit tests that are run on every build, which is triggered upon every commit (or, after a slight delaying trigger).

Best Practices

• Maintain a code repository
• Automate the build
• Make the build self-testing
• Everyone commits to the baseline every day
• Every commit should be built
• Keep the build fast
• Test in a clone of the production environment
• Make it easy to get the latest deliverables
• Everyone can see the results of the latest build
• Automate deployment