It seems to me that there is a dependency between Continuous Integration (CI) and build time. Each time I hit a slow build it puts pressure on 'fast' CI. It seems that if the build is slow then CI may be more destructive that beneficial. I'm thinking it is all a question of ratio.
CI does not define an integration rate. Some teams see CI as once a week, others see it as every 15 minutes. It is a relative concept.
If a build box can build and run all tests in, say, 1 second then a team's commit rate of once every 5 minutes would seem achievable. Each developer would have instant feedback and be able to fix, or revert, any problem within a couple of minutes, after a commit, with minimal effect (without considering a pre-commit test system). But if the build takes, say, 30 minutes and the team's commit rate was once every 15 minutes then by the time a build failure is detected the whole team is affected.
So it seems to me that there is a relationship between CI's rate and build time. Just do not know hat it is yet.
1 comment:
I like to think of the build time as batch size. Large batch sizes can easily build up backlogs.
Of course, you can do a lot to reduce build time: tune the CI server, optimise your build.
I have a suspicion that we're not so good at optimising functional test builds, however.
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