Continuous Integration Best practices

[Niraj Salot]

Hi .

What is the Best practices for Continuous Integration?

We have Bamboo & GIT. Our main application is build using GWT. Our application compilation takes huge time if we compile on local developer machine with 4 GB of RAM. 

So the question is:

As per the CI process , Should the developer build on Local machine or Should he directly push the code to GIT central repo in his/her branch and Bamboo build server should build for him?

Please Suggest.

Thanks , Niraj.

[Marcin Oles]

Hi,

I think you should always first build your code on your own machine, to avoid pushing code which does not compile or is unstable. Building project locally is usually a necessity.

You could then use Bamboo to do other things for you - besides building your code (maybe on another OS, which could be beneficial), Bamboo can execute long running tests or perform deployments/releases to various environments.

For some additional guides, you can see https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BAMBOO/Bamboo+Best+Practice page.

Regards,
Marcin

[Niraj Salot]

Hello , What should be done in a case where compilation on developer machine takes lot of time & indirectly impacts their productivity? Thanks , Niraj

[Marcin Oles]

There aren't many options I think. - One way to improve compilation time would be to avoid clean-building and use just building whenever possible, although I'm not very familiar with GWT. As far as I know, GWT is a slow technology. - Another option would be to improve your machine. SSD drives, faster processor etc. could help. But if you really find it impacting productivity, you *could* use Bamboo as you described (to actually build your branch and avoid building code locally). But in such case your team should use personal branches, and it would be hard to co-operate on one branch for many people (as the branch will often be unstable). It's far from being recommended and a good practice, though it's something you can consider and do.