Thursday, June 5, 2008

CI / TeamCity is Seriously COOL!

OK... I'll be the first to admit that I'm just getting into Agile processes and I'm still a bit skeptical.  At first, I thought (CI = Continuous Integration) 'CI builds - is it really worthwhile?'.  Now, I've got a TeamCity site & build agent up and going, and I'm totally SOLD!

Here are the benefits as I see them for our situation:

  1. We know almost immediately when someone broke the build (they know too!)
  2. We have better checkin quality now that people are tired of getting those 'compilation failed' emails.
  3. We always have a source to go to for a 'current' build - no need to get the sources and build on your own machine, or go ask a 'build master' to get you a build.
  4. We have other 'automation' points that we can hook into when we're ready to move on to bigger & better methods.

As an example of #4, I hope to soon have our NUnit tests running as part of an automated build.  I also think we can have automated installer builds going if we wanted to.  And, best of all, by virtue of TeamCity's ability to 'watch' our source control server for updates, and it's ability to run any arbitrary command line, NAnt, or MSBuild (or many more) task in response to those updates, the sky is the limit!

I can't wait to get more 'good stuff' implemented on TeamCity.

1 comment:

R said...

Our check in quality went WAAAYY up when we instituted the broken build token that is given to the person who last broke the build. I kept it for over 3 weeks.

Ours is a Rabies Plush Doll:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/plush/6708/