1. Continuous Integration (CI)
Report
Test
Version
Control
Build
By Jim Rush 1

2. Agenda About Me What is Continuous Integration
Components of Continuous Integration
Commonly used Tools
Tour through an actual Jenkins deployment
Exploration of major components
Advice 2

3. About Me
Development Manager building enterprise products for Call Centers
I work for Enghouse, which is a Canadian holding (acquisition) company. The local office was once known as Syntellect.
In the last seven years we’ve built various types of products that are built and validated by CI systems:
Telephony (call control)
API (middleware) and User Interfaces (Winforms & SilverLight)
Multiple development languages (Java, C#, C++)
Different test tools and frameworks
Team consists of those fresh out of school to the young at heart 3

4. What is Continuous Integration
continuous integration (CI) implements continuous processes of applying quality control — small pieces of effort, applied frequently. Continuous integration aims to improve the quality of software, and to reduce the time taken to deliver it, by replacing the traditional practice of applying quality control after completing all development. ---Wikipedia 4

5. Periodically, Validate your Project
More Simply
Periodically, Validate your Project 5

6. Periodically, Validate your Project
More Simply
Periodically, Validate your Project
Periodically – as often as you can afford to. Ideally, anytime something changes
Validate – insure project is operating within a margin of expected results
Project – Everything that constitutes the creation, validation and maintenance of your software. 6

7. Why Know when you break existing functionality.
Issues are typically easier to address the sooner they are found.
Issues are typically easier to address when the number of changes between working and failing is small.
Visibility into health of project
Fail fast – If there is a problem, discover and plan for it early. Don’t wait until the end of your project to realize it doesn’t work. 7

8. Common CI Components Software Repository (version control)
Build Software
Build scripts (Batch files, Ant Scripts, Make files, Visual Studio)
Monitor and trigger process
Software package that monitors software repositories for changes and triggers a build
Identifies and reports failures/successes
Automated Testing
Unit, Integration, System, X-ability testing
Metrics Collection and Reporting
ESLOC, Test Counts, Code Coverage, performance data, … 8

9. Common CI Workflow Continuous Integration Manager Version Control
Build
Unit
Test
Integration
Test
System
Test
Reporting / Monitoring / Metrics 9

10. Continuous Integration Manager
Manages the CI Workflow
Monitors Version Control
Handles CI workflow and dependencies
Reporting
Common Tools
Cruise control
Jenkins/Hudson
Custom scripts and code 10

11. Why do I like Jenkins
Reasonably friendly web based administration, but uses easy to change XML for persistence
Flexible
Enables distributed build and testing
Provides a plugin for nearly every other available tool in the CI workflow
Various artifact repositories
Various triggers
Authentication system, including not having one
Very rich set of reporting components 11

12. Very Quick Tour of Jenkins12

13. Our Main Page 13

14. Job Configuration 14

15. 17

16. A Build Job (Compiles Project)18

17. A Test Job 19

18. Custom Test Detail Report20

19. Version Control System (VCS)
If you aren’t using Version Control, why not?
It can be free
It’s fairly easy to setup and manage a basic repository
Why to have it
Backups
Tracking changes to time, person, feature, …
Support multiple versions of code including exploratory versions
Common Solutions
Subversion (SVN)
Mercurial
GIT … 21

20. Building A build is any set of steps that creates a distribution
Compiles(if needed) are usually technology driven
Common tools:
Apache Ant
Maven
Batch files / Shell scripts
Common Challenges
Repositories or other intermediate build components
Error reporting
Dependency management
Build efficiency 23

21. Build Advice Build a complete product including installation
Invest in quality build scripts
Well documented
Good logging
Good error handling and reporting
Build all distribution flavors
Multiple project members can maintain the build
Apply static code analysis or other tools that can validate your code
Profile your builds
Design builds to support distribution 24

22. Testing Testing Types Common automation tools/frameworks
Unit – modular, isolated
Integration – not modular nor isolated
System – Complete distribution and dependencies
Common automation tools/frameworks
Code testing: xUnit (Junit, NetUnit,…)
UI Testing tools: Accessibility layers and/or commercial products
Custom scripts, frameworks and simulators
Testing Results
Junit XML files are the most flexible
Test count
Code coverage 25

23. Testing Advice
Write quality tests cases as they can become harder to maintain than the product
Provide good feedback for working and failing steps
Test failure recovery can be hard
Integration and Testing frameworks can be more complicated and more difficult than the project you are creating 26

24. Metrics Collect what is important or useful
Most data is only valuable as a trend
There are no magic goals for some data 27

25. Metrics Advice
Unless you have a tool that captures what you want, build your own. Simple code to collect and a database is all you need.
Writing small applications that grab data and generate HTML isn’t hard.
Linking graphs to data tables in Excel is easy.
Periodically review the data 28

26. Metrics presented with Excel29

27. Detail Test Report Showing last 10 test results30

28. Code Coverage with Cobertura31

29. Thinking about your CI Infrastructure
It can be general purpose trigger and scheduling tool
It can be a reporting / metrics hub
It doesn’t have to be singular
Multiple sites / teams
Different versions or types of projects 32

30. Parting Advice
Treat your CI environment as a core part of your project
Multiple people should understand it your CI system
Knowledge is power (metrics/project insight), but use it carefully
Data doesn’t have to be pretty, focus on content and value
Continuously Improve – Allocate time to improve
Don’t let your process or metrics make you stupid; focus on your goals and how you are going to get there
There isn’t enough time to do everything, prioritize
It is both easier, and harder than it appears
Your infrastructure needs to be reliable enough to be trusted 33

31. Questions ? 34