Build Process
May 28, 2008
The heartbeat of any Buildmasters project is our continuous build process. This combination of technologies allows a team of developers to develop and unit test the code confidently and in isolation whilst the entire process of integrating the completed components is automated on our ‘Build Machine’.
Each time a developer checks in a piece of code the Build Machine detects the change in our Subversion Source Control System and kicks off an automated build of the entire project using Visual Build Pro. We follow a Test Driven Development (TDD) approach, which means that each code component that is checked into source control is accompanied by a number of unit tests also. The automated build compiles the code for the new component and the unit tests and then runs the tests.
If the new and existing unit tests all pass then the code is packaged, versioned and copied to a directory ready for deployment. If a unit test fails the build ‘breaks’ and the developer who checked in the breaking code is notified.
The state of the build is monitored continually by the entire team and broken builds are fixed as a priority. The resulting process and suite of unit tests provides an incredible robust development environment where developers can concentrate on building components rather than integration, as well as being able to refactor their code with confidence, knowing that if their actions cause any regression the unit tests will pick up the problem immediately.
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