Daily routine with continuous integration

3 October, 2007. It was a Wednesday.

This post was originally published here.

I chuckled quite a bit after reading the Top 5 Signs of Discontinuous Integration, though I think “dysfunctional integration” is a better word. So what’s my routine?

Start of the day

Check if build is green
- Get latest if it is
  - Fix build if it isn’t

Coding

Code/write tests
- Run local build, make sure code compiles and tests pass
  - Get latest
    - Run local build again
      - Check in, with decent comments
        
        Wait for CI build to finish
        
        If build is red, drop everything and fix
        
        Otherwise, go back to step 1

I’ll get latest several times per day. The more often I integrate (the “continuous” part), the easier it is do so. If you’re scared to get latest version when the build is green, you probably have some dysfunctional integration issues. If you don’t know what “the build is green” means, well, that’s a whole other ball of wax.

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