A Day in the Life of a Checkin

Using Git And Friends

[This is a stub since I (Squirrel) didn't have much to add to this discussion. Please add details.]

We discussed using Git, Mercurial, and similar distributed version-control systems. The consensus was that DVCS works best with continuous integration if you have a central repository from which to draw candidates for CI builds. Why use a DVCS then, since it is not necessarily distributed? The tools provide extra flexibility before the commit to the main repository, and have other useful features besides (e.g. Git's whole-tree diffs allow you to track code as it moves from file to file).

Synchronous CI

[This is a stub since I (Squirrel) didn't have much to add to this discussion. Please add details.]

We discussed the synchronous, less-automated continuous integration described by James Shore here: http://jamesshore.com/Blog/Continuous-Integration-on-a-Dollar-a-Day.html. No one had actually tried this CI method, but most did not think it was workable with larger teams and complex tests (such as the acceptance tests described in the next section).

CI Real-World Example

We discussed how CI runs at youDevise, a small financial-services firm in London. [Diagram and more details to follow shortly.]