BeautifulBuilds
@RoyOsheroveBouvet
Why do we have builds?
Builds and tests are made to be broken
What’s beautiful?
• See flow• Ease of change• Coherent
Recommendations
• Use the right tools for build and CI• Use the right patterns to allow extra benefits
Part of a Build Process
• Build Script/editor• Build Server / CI Server• Build Environments
What’s the difference?
• Automated Build (what to do)• Continuous Integration (when to do it)
Build Scripts (Bat)Procedural
Xml Build Scripts (Ant) - declarative
Domain Specific Language Build Scripts (Rake)
declarative
Declarative• [Ant, nant,msbuild] (http://ant.apache.org/)• [Automake] (http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/)• [Boost Build] (http://www.boost.org/doc/tools/build/index.html)• [Cmake] (http://www.cmake.org/)• [Make] (http://www.gnu.org/software/make/)• [Ocamlbuild] (http://gallium.inria.fr/~pouillar/)• [Omake] (http://omake.metaprl.org/index.html)• [Qmake] (http://doc.trolltech.com/4.2/qmake-manual.html)• [Rake] (http://rake.rubyforge.org/)• [SCons] (http://www.scons.org/)• [Waf] (http://code.google.com/p/waf/)
Procedural
• FinalBuilder• Visual build pro• Batch files• Powersell scripts
Visual Build Scripts (FinalBuilder)
Which one?
• Visual editing allows seeing FLOW• Easy to update and change by newbies• Easy to debug
• FinalBuilder or Visual Build Pro on windows• Rake on linux or mac
The Right CI Tools
TeamCity
Jenkins
CruiseControl
Hudson
Many others. Which one?
• Support build agents• Support amazon ec2 auto scaling agents• Easy to setup and maintain• Free for a small team
• TeamCity is awesome
But some CI servers support build actions too!
Hardware
• Build Machine (with teamcity)– + agent machines (optional)
• Test Machine• Staging Machine• Production Machine
• This can all be in the cloud (EC2 is wonderful)
Build Configurations
• Continuous Integration Build• Slow Build (nightly, optional)• Deploy to test servers• Deploy to staging servers (optional)• Deploy to production
Build Script Injection
• Allow version aware builds• Build scripts are part of source control• Build configurations on the CI server are dumb
triggers
Fill In The Blanks
• Build Script uses placeholders for system related knowledge
• Placeholders are filled from environment variables or other types of parameters to the command line
• These variables are SET by the Build Configuration on the CI server
Location Agnostic Scripts
Extract Script
Build Chain Triggers
Triggered by checkin
Triggered by end of previous
Manual
Manual
Slow Builds
Do X
Do X + Y
Do X + Y + Z
Do X + y + Z + N
Cumulative, Fast Builds
How Fast?
Shipping Skeleton
• Start by releasing• Deploy a hello world empty skeleton• Then fill out the product• Continue adding small build features as you go
along
@RoyOsheroveBouvet