COMP1531

Continuous Integration

Continuous integration: Practice of automating the integration of code changes from multiple contributors into a single software project.

Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration

Key principles and processes:

 

1. Write tests:
   1. Ideally tests for each story
   2. Broad tests: unit, integration, acceptance, UI tests
2. Use code coverage checkers
3. Merge and integrate code as often as possible
4. Ensure the build always works (i.e. is "green")

How it works

• Typically tests will be run by a "runner", which is an application that works with your version control software (git) to execute the tests. This is because tests can require quite resource intensive activities
  • Gitlab: No runners built in
  • Bitbucket: Runners built in

Broad Architecture

Repository 1

Repository 2

People's computers

People's computers

Gitlab Runner

CI: Readings

We will assume you have read the following items:

• https://about.gitlab.com/product/continuous-integration/
• https://www.atlassian.com/continuous-delivery/continuous-integration/how-to-get-to-continuous-integration

Gitlab, like many source control tools, has a way of doing continuous integration. An overview is here and a start guide is here.

 

There is quite a lot of variance and depth to this, so we will not cover it in any detail besides high level

 

A simple example can be found here.

Let's do a demo setting up CI with gitlab.