Continuous Integration for Agile Project Managers: Part II (#2 in the series Continuous Integration for Agile Project Managers)
By Adam Leggett
In part 1 of this series, I described the essential elements of Continuous Integration within the context of agile development and briefly discussed the software options for a CI server. I explained that the building blocks of CI are a version control system and a build management tool. The former creates the foundation, by giving the CI process access to the latest copy of project source code. The latter then takes the source code and, in most scenarios, transforms it into the deployable binary artefact that represents the software application being developed.
It is useful to consider this transformational process as a series of steps or life-cycle phases. By analyzing our build in this conceptual way, we can better understand how to ‘bind’ or attach actions to each distinct life-cycle phase. Why is this important? Well, using this simple idea I can demonstrate how you can hardwire quality checks into to your CI process. Performing such checks, and publishing their results, means that we can really start to take advantage of the significant benefits CI can bring to your agile projects.
I actually prefer the term ‘quality gate’ as opposed to ‘quality check’ as it better fits the idea that you must pass through one gate before entering another. In each case, if we are unable to pass through the gate, we can choose to fail the build and our CI system should dispatch a notification to us. In addition, a good CI process will publish the metrics and ‘violations’ concerning each gate, so that they can be reviewed in detail after each build has occurred.
Build Life-Cycle Phases and Quality Gates
Phase 1 – Resolve component dependencies
Often our projects will have dependencies on other internal or third-party components. This is very common for example, in the Java or Ruby programming language worlds where the re-use of packaged binary artefacts (JAR’s for the former and Gem’s for the latter) is considered best practice. One key attribute of a released component is its version (e.g. 2.1.1) and it is here we can apply our first simple gate – ensure that we are using the correct versions of our dependent components.
Phase 2 – Static Analysis of the source code
Source code inspection is (or should be) a integral part of your software development process. Often this requires human beings(!) to perform formal code reviews who possess an understanding of the software requirements and application design. However, we can automate much of this using tooling integrated into the build process. Some examples of inspection that we can perform are
- Adherence to organisational coding standards (e.g. all source files must start with a copyright statement, all functions should be commented)
- Finding duplicated, or copied and pasted code statements.
- Finding garden variety programming mistakes.
- Adherence to architectural design rules.
Phase 3 – Compilation of the source code
If you are writing software using a programming language that needs to be compiled, such as Java or C++, this is obviously a very basic and essential gate to pass through.
Phase 4 – Execution of unit tests and test coverage analysis
We should always seek to execute the unit tests. Indeed, for some build management tools, this is the default setting and we can impose a gate that fails the build if unit tests do not pass.
The ability to write robust unit tests, that can be repeatedly executed in an automated fashion, in different environments, is one of the hallmarks of a good software developer IMHO. Wiring the execution of these tests into the CI process via the build tool, helps us to ensure that the tests do not contain dependencies on a developer’s local environment – a mistake more junior team members often make. However, how can we determine that the tests are actually doing something useful, and exercising appropriate functions or routines within the application code? This is accomplished using a code coverage analysis tool (such as Rcov), which can highlight those areas of the code-base untroubled by testing. Gates can be set as course-grained thresholds, e.g. trigger a build failure if less than 80% of all application code is being tested, or more granular configurations can be applied.
Phase 5 – Packaging the application
Although we normally don’t attribute a quality gate to this phase, it is often useful during the CI process to embed information into the packaged application for the purposes of traceability and provenance. For example, this can help identify the source code origin or ‘tag’ of an application deployed to a testing environment when defects are found.
Summary
Hopefully, I’ve demonstrated how CI, in addition to continuously integrating the source code developed by your team, can also provide a valuable feedback loop with respect to the quality of the software being created. In the next part, we’ll look into some options for applying ‘functional’ quality gates within the CI process using advanced testing automation.
Adam Leggett has worked as a software consultant to UK FTSE 500 companies for over 10 years at UPCO. He specializes in enterprise technologies and agile Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tooling. He is Chief Architect for Mike CI, providers of a simple to use, on-demand, hosted Continuous Integration service.
Mike – Smart Services for Smart Developers.
