Clint Shank describes an interesting game for keeping the integration build “in the green”. It’s inspired by a story in Alistair Cockburn’s Agile Software Development book. This is a very interesting way to use positive and negative reinforcement to ensuring a healthy build. Clint has some other articles on similar topics here.

Run Private Builds is the latest video in the 46 practices series for Continuous Integration. It’s part of seven development team practices that is described in chapter 2 - Introducing Continuous Integration .

By running a private system build on your workstation prior to committing code to the version control repository, you can reduce integration build errors. What’s more, I discuss other approaches such as personal builds and delayed commits. Finally, I demonstrate an example of running a private build which includes integrating changes from other developers prior to committing your source code to the version control repository. If you’re looking for more information and other videos and examples, go to the main site of IntegrateButton.com

In demonstrating the Use a CI Server practice from Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk , I show you how to create a full-featured CI system using CruiseControl, Ant and various testing, inspection and deployment tools such as Cargo, DbUnit, JUnit, JavaNCSS, Selenium, Simian, JDepend, Subversion, Cobertura and CheckStyle .

The demonstration includes a fully-functioning (albeit small) web application. You will be able to access the full source of build scripts, CruiseControl configuration scripts, Java and other configuration files so that you can configure this in your environment as well.

If you’re interested in the mechanics of installing and configuring a CI system, this is the video for you .

JavaRanch reviewed Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk and gave it a “whopping 10 out of 10 horseshoes“.

From JavaRanch: “This is an excellent book and the website adds to it! [It] reinforced the book nicely because it was like a guru explaining his experiences. It also goes into much more detail than the book has room for on each topic. … Each chapter ends with questions to get you thinking about CI in YOUR process.”

It was great to see so many of you that attended the Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk book signing this past Thursday at the Barnes and Noble in Reston, Virginia.

I had the pleasure of meeting old friends, colleagues and acquaintances along with many new people. I’m sorry if I wasn’t able to say hello to everyone, but thank you for attending.

Thanks again to Stelligent (my employer) and 5AM Solutions for hosting such a fun event.