Beyond Legacy Code

Establish the Heartbeat of a Project

I think of continuous integration as the heartbeat of a project. It’s something that happens in the background, and it never stops. It’s automatic…or anyway, it should be.

It doesn’t matter how big your team is, or even if you’re a team of one. Go out and buy some kind of a computer. It can be any cheap machine. That becomes the build server.

The build server sits there and waits for new code to be added to the repository. When it sees new code come in, it goes about automatically rebuilding the whole system. It runs the automated tests, verifies that everything works, and gives you a result. That machine sits in the background and it’s always running, it’s always there, and always present…just like a beating ...