DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports
Events Video Library
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Join Today! Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile Manage Email Subscriptions Moderation Admin Console How to Post to DZone Article Submission Guidelines
View Profile
Sign Out
Refcards
Trend Reports
Events
View Events Video Library
Zones
Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks

Integrating PostgreSQL Databases with ANF: Join this workshop to learn how to create a PostgreSQL server using Instaclustr’s managed service

Mobile Database Essentials: Assess data needs, storage requirements, and more when leveraging databases for cloud and edge applications.

Monitoring and Observability for LLMs: Datadog and Google Cloud discuss how to achieve optimal AI model performance.

Automated Testing: The latest on architecture, TDD, and the benefits of AI and low-code tools.

Related

  • What Is API-First?
  • DevOps: CI/CD Tools to Watch Out for in 2022
  • Top 7 Static Code Analysis Tools
  • Why Incorporate CI/CD Pipeline in Your SDLC?

Trending

  • Agile Estimation: Techniques and Tips for Success
  • GenAI-Infused ChatGPT: A Guide To Effective Prompt Engineering
  • Building AI Applications With Java and Gradle
  • Software Verification and Validation With Simple Examples
  1. DZone
  2. Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
  3. Deployment
  4. Continuous Integration: How to Avoid 'Integration Hell'

Continuous Integration: How to Avoid 'Integration Hell'

Sahil Patel user avatar by
Sahil Patel
·
Oct. 09, 14 · Interview
Like (0)
Save
Tweet
Share
8.14K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

If you have worked on a software development team, you will recognize these scenarios:

  1. You have a large team of engineers developing a software application. While committing the code in the repository, one of the developers forgets to commit one or two files. When other team members take the repository updates, they find problems in the code due to the missing file changes, and they have to spend a long time debugging the problems.
  2. Your engineering team is developing a software product. Your Business Analysis team needs frequent updates of the code to validate the changes or demonstrate new features to the customers. Preparing a new build and deploying it on the staging server for a BA team takes a significant amount of a developer's valuable time.
  3. You have delivered new software to your client and it is in UAT (User Acceptance Test) stage. The client finds some bugs or suggests minor tweaks which you need to deliver quickly. These deadlines create a rush to completion, which results in negative side effects and breaks the previously smooth running functionality.

The above examples are just some of the common cases a software development encounters during the software development life cycle. These issues can be frustrating and can cause delays and extend the schedule and increase the budget of a software development project. Fortunately, we can use the concept of CI (Continuous Integration) to protect us against just such situations.

Continuous Integration (CI)

Continuous integration is the practice of merging all developers’ working copies with a shared mainline and making a build several times a day. It is used to prevent integration problems, to improve the quality of software and to reduce the time taken to deliver. Continuous Integration is derived from the early practice of XP (Extreme Programming) where a team integrates the code change more often to avoid descending into 'integration hell', e.g., integrating a big chunk of code changes at the last minute which results in conflicts, and can take more time to resolve as compared to the time required to make original changes.

Software product and development support

There are many CI tools available in market, which can be set up on a server to perform continuous integration. A CI server can be configured to make a build at scheduled intervals immediately when code is committed to the repository. Automated test scripts can be run on the build to ensure that the software behaves as expected after the code integration. It is also possible to deploy the build on testing server after all the tests are successfully passed, and make it available for demo or release. Moreover, some of the CI tools can generate the documentation from the code automatically to support the Quality Control, Release Management and other related activities.

Tools like Git, CVS, SVN, Perforce, Mercurial, Team Foundation, Ant, Maven, Gradle, MSBuild, NAnt, Rake, JUnit, NUnit, Selenium, CppNCSS, TestNG, Xunit, Clover, Cobertura, Emma, Serenity, Sonar, NCover, Checkstyle, PMD, Dry, Findbugs, Warnings, CCM, Violations, LDAP, Active Directory, Crowd, Weblogic, Glassfish, Tomcat, JBoss, EC2, Virtual Box, VmWare, and JCloud are an important part of any developer toolkit, and can augment and support continuous integration initiatives to create a flexible integration environment that is easier to maintain and upgrade.

CI tools can generate various reports and notify developers about any conflicts or errors in the integration so that they can fix the problem immediately. In short, Continuous Integration ensures that the code residing on the repository is stable, tested and deployable at any point in time.

Hasan Sunasara Who loves to design, develop and tune Java Enterprise Applications. I strive to learn new things and improve on every possible areas touched by on the path of life. When not working on Java, I socialize, read blogs and watch movies.

Continuous Integration/Deployment Integration Software development

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Related

  • What Is API-First?
  • DevOps: CI/CD Tools to Watch Out for in 2022
  • Top 7 Static Code Analysis Tools
  • Why Incorporate CI/CD Pipeline in Your SDLC?

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 3343 Perimeter Hill Drive
  • Suite 100
  • Nashville, TN 37211
  • support@dzone.com

Let's be friends: