Home > Archive > Software Engineering > October 2006 > what does "when the build breaks" mean?
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what does "when the build breaks" mean?
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| officeigarashi@gmail.com 2006-10-14, 9:59 pm |
| Hello.
I firstly posted this for another group, but was suggested that this
question may be more suitable for this group. Hope this is the right
place to ask this question.
I am reading an article about build process optimization. In the
article, it says that you have to rerun "when the build breaks." Could
anybody explain what it means? Does it mean "when the building process
stops" or "when an error occurs in the building process"?
Many thanks in advance.
M.
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| officeigarashi wrote:
> I am reading an article about build process optimization. In the
> article, it says that you have to rerun "when the build breaks." Could
> anybody explain what it means? Does it mean "when the building process
> stops" or "when an error occurs in the building process"?
Your programming team should maintain a build (and test) server. Each time
you submit code to it (such as thru CVS, Subversion, Perforce, etc.), it
should download the latest version to a build folder, and run a build
script.
The build script should rebuild any binary files whose source changed. Then
it should integrate everything into a deliverable. Then it should deliver
this to another folder, and should run automated tests on it.
(You do _have_ automated tests, don't you?)
You should always build and test code on your own desktop before submitting
it. However, your team's entire codebase might be too big for you to totally
build and test.
On the build server, any step could break. You could miss a file, so it
can't be downloaded, so the files that expect it might break. When they
break, they may or may not report a clean error message. Sometimes the build
just dies, and sometimes it creates a compiler syntax error. The build
server should e-mail this to the team's mailing list, just as it should
e-mail a successful run.
If you broke the build, you should fix it. You should be able to do the
exact same things as the build server tried to do. You should start its
top-level build script, from your desktop.
If anyone breaks the build, their team should look at how your local tests
and build scripts could do the same thing that the global scripts tried to
do. The goal is always to push the most fragile builds and tests out to the
scripts on their modules, so builds will break as early as possible, if they
are going to break, hopefully on your own desktop.
--
Phlip
[url]http://www.greencheese.us/Z Land[/url] <-- NOT a blog!!!
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| officeigarashi@gmail.com 2006-10-15, 3:58 am |
| Hello, Phlip.
I thank you very much for your explanation. Now I can see what is
happening when a build breaks. As you may imagin, I am not familiar
with programming, and did not even know that files are downloaded to
the server to complete a build... Your explanation surprisingly aligns
with this article (yes, it is about automated build and release
systems), and actually, it saves lots of my reading.
Thanks again, and have a nice day!
M.
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