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.

The Continuous Integration and Testing Conference, CITCON Europe 2007, is fast upon us and I’m sure it’ll be another great one. This year it’s in Brussels, Belgium. I will be attending this year and hope to bring a group from the states to the event. I’m an alumnus of CITCON North America (The inaugural in Chicago, 2006 and the most recent in Dallas in April of this year).

CITCON follows an OpenSpace format which means there is no single speaker, per se. Instead, it’s an exchange of ideas based on an initial topic and agenda. It works amazingly well and you’ll learn a ton, especially with the caliber of people that attend a CITCON.

Other than your personal travel accommodations, attendance at CITCON is free. On Friday evening, there is an initial meet/greet and topic ideas are shared. Saturday is full of five one-hour sessions. Your brain will be mush by the end, so many get together for food and drink on Saturday evening. Because it’s on the weekend, many of the people that attend CITCON are very passionate about Continuous Integration and Testing. I always learn a lot when attending and I’m sure you will too. Register now! Space is limited to 100 registrants.

If you’re a fan of Continuous Integration (and local to the Washington DC area) you’ll want to clear your calendar this Thursday evening, August 30th, to celebrate with Andy, Steve and I for our book signing of Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk at the Reston, VA Barnes and Noble bookstore. I think both of my contributors will be there as well!

Book signing at Barnes and Noble (map)
with Paul Duvall (that’s me!), Andrew Glover, and Steve Matyas

1851 Fountain Drive
Reston, VA 20190
Thursday, August 30th
7:30 - 9:00 p.m.

Immediately following the signing, Stelligent and 5AM Solutions are throwing a release party at McCormick & Schmick’s. So…if the book isn’t enough to get you out of the house, the complimentary drinks and appetizers should :)

Release party at McCormick & Schmick’s
Reston Town Center
9:00 - 11:00 p.m.

If you’re interested, please make sure to RSVP prior to August 28th. Oh, and feel free to spread the word, far and wide!

For those of you keeping up with Continuous Integration happenings, Paul Julius, co-founder of the CruiseControl CI server, is now blogging at http://pauljulius.com/blog/. The main site is at http://pauljulius.com/

Meera Subbarao recently posted a review at JavaLobby of the Continuous Integration book. As she says: “The author has gathered so much information in this book that it will help those of you who want to use CI or even those who have already been using CI. This book will definitely give you a solid foundation for using CI which is one of the most important team practices. With CI and this book as a guide to using CI, I assure you, your system will always be in a working state before and after integration.”

Have a read here.

What the…?! There, I said it. Whew…now I feel better. Maybe this was a provocative blog title and is better said “Effective CI has little to do with your CI server”. Better?

Last year, in an Automation for the people article, I wrote:

“CruiseControl is the granddaddy of CI servers. It’s been available for over five years, and in many ways, the CruiseControl server has become synonymous with the practice of Continuous Integration.”

That a tool has become synonymous with a practice is actually a good and a bad thing. It’s good because there’s a name and an actual tangible thing that we can attach to this practice called “Continuous Integration”.

To be clear, a CI server…ummm, lemme see, it…it…builds your software and then notifies you when it’s done.

However, having a tool synonymous with a practice can be bad thing because people can get carried away with the various bells and whistles different CI servers provide. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of CruiseControl and other CI servers, but let’s not get lulled into thinking that the tool is what provides the practice. Vendors may want us to think this, but we’re smarter than this, right?

I will have done a disservice to readers of Continuous Integration if you were to believe that the most important facet of CI is the CI server itself. It just might be the most unimportant part of the practice of CI. In fact, as I indicate in the book, some high-performing teams don’t even use an automated CI server for their integration builds (they perform a manual synchronous integration build - which uses an automated build). If someone thinks that the difference between practicing effective and ineffective CI is tweaking the automated CI server to be “just right”, beware…you may be listening to either a theorist or a misguided practitioner. The most important part of the effective practice of CI is the development team’s daily practices (committing code often, keeping integration builds in the green and so on) and the fully automated build from a single source repository. Of course, there are a number of other practices (that we discuss in the book), but “Using a CI server ” is far down the list of importance.

Having actually implemented fully-functioning CI systems (not just the server) on many projects and platforms, I’ve found that installing and configuring the CI server (thanks to many of the great CI servers on the market) is typically one of the more trivial parts of the implementation.

Interestingly, I have found that when teams hear that a CI “server” is being installed, it can help instill or even encourage people to begin employing beneficial development practices that work well in a CI environment, but unless the team culture changes, it’s usually a short-lived gain.

I’ve included a full example of a CruiseControl configuration and a fully automated build (using Ant) with a small working Web application at IntegrateButton.com. Every week, I will add additional videos and examples to the site using different tools (e.g. Hudson in the upcoming weeks) and environments as this is a better and more timely medium than a book to share this information.

Just remember, don’t be the fool with the tool. You can employ CI with or without a CI server.

Practice 5 of the book (which is the fourth practice in chapter 2) is Write Automated Developer Tests. It’s a high-level practice that covers:

• Writing an automated test using an xUnit-based framework such as JUnit or NUnit
• Committing these tests to a version control repository
• Running these automated tests as part of an integration build with every checkin (using Continuous Integration)

This video example demonstrates using the JUnit test framework with Eclipse.

• Continuous Integration and (the U.S. distribution of) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows were printed by the same printing company: RR Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana. So far, it seems, Deathly Hallows has sold more copies :-)
• I wrote much of Continuous Integration in either a Starbucks or Panera
• I took off about five weeks from work (at various times) to write the book - along with numerous weekends and late nights
• I decided to write Continuous Integration while on a train from Rome to Florence, Italy in June 2004. Addison-Wesley accepted my proposal in late 2004
• I write an article series for IBM developerWorks called Automation for the people which explores techniques in automating developer activities. Continuous Integration refers to some of the articles I wrote in this series
• Andy Glover and I work at Stelligent. Stelligent provides, among other services, Continuous Integration Implementation and Training

For those of you in the Washington DC area, my co-author Andy Glover and I will be doing a book signing for Continuous Integration on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at the Reston Barnes and Noble bookstore. Here are the details:

Barnes & Noble
Thursday, August 30th @ 7:30pm
1851 Fountain Dr
Reston, VA 20190
703-437-9490

See you there.

Supply update: Last week, some retailers had sold out of the book, but last I checked, it is in stock in most stores and online book retailers in North America now. It may be a few weeks before those of you in Australia, Europe and Asia start receiving copies.