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A build light indicator is a simple visual indicator used in Agile software development to inform a team of software developers about the current status of their project. The actual object used can vary from a pressure gauge to a lava lamp, but its purpose remains the same: to quickly communicate whether a software process (such as a 'build') is successful or not.
The build light indicator originated from CruiseControl,[ citation needed ] a continuous integration tool created by employees of ThoughtWorks. Though it primarily functioned as a web page dashboard that could report more detailed information about a build, the software could also control external devices for simpler reporting. [1]
The traditional use of a build light is to determine the success of a software build in a continuous integration (CI) system. [2] Different development teams have used different indicators, but a popular choice is the green and red lava lamp – green when the build is successful and red when something is wrong. [3] Build lights may even be remotely accessible through a webcam or other means. [4] However, since many of the tests in busy development offices will always be in a state of re-test after the latest changes, some indicators have a three state display [2] – pass, fail and being re-tested, to provide a more nuanced indicator for staff and managers. [5]
With the growth from continuous integration to continuous testing, the number of simultaneous build targets may increase, even for a single codebase. As well as a simple build (i.e. compilation) target, there will now be unit testing and various levels of system testing. As extensive tests are slow and it is desirable to keep fast tests running on a fast cycle to give rapid feedback to the developers, the number of build targets may increase to fifty or more. This is too many to show with a simple lava lamp display. Integration servers like Jenkins offer a web-accessible dashboard page and this may be permanently displayed on a wall-mounted flat screen monitor instead. The details of such a dashboard are too small to read across an office, but the colour changes present an overall picture of status.
With a methodology of continuous test-driven development, new tests are released before working code is developed to pass them. There is thus a period when some tests are known, and indeed required to be failing. [6] Failing tests are needed as they demonstrate the capability of the new tests to detect the situation of concern. Once the new code is developed and working, these tests begin to pass. A continuous testing environment into which new tests are released before their code thus requires two build targets: one tracks the latest code and tests, the other 'release candidate' is only updated in increments when all tests are fulfilled by passing code. For the build indicator this also implies that one of those targets will frequently be shown as "failing" its tests. As this anticipated "failure" would be misleading to naive watchers, the build indicator should either hide it or present it distinctly.
Where several code targets, such as old product versions, are still supported for CI, but are not under such active development, then a complete dashboard may become dominated by "stale" targets that rarely change. In this case a selected dashboard may be more appropriate, where only those targets that are either failing, or are recently active, are displayed. The full dashboard is available to developer's desktops, but the wall display shows only the significant highlights. Such dashboards are often coded locally by screen-scraping the main dashboard and applying relevant local filters to it, according to local needs. One drawback to a dynamic filtered dashboard, compared to a static dashboard, is that the position of icons for a particular target may shift on the screen, making it hard to read from across an office. In this case, distinctive icons, such as a product logo, may be displayed rather than simple colour blocks.
Test-driven development (TDD) is a way of writing code that involves writing an automated unit-level test case that fails, then writing just enough code to make the test pass, then refactoring both the test code and the production code, then repeating with another new test case.
Agile software development is the mindset for developing software that derives from values agreed upon by The Agile Alliance, a group of 17 software practitioners in 2001. As documented in their Manifesto for Agile Software Development the practitioners value:
In software testing, test automation is the use of software separate from the software being tested to control the execution of tests and the comparison of actual outcomes with predicted outcomes. Test automation can automate some repetitive but necessary tasks in a formalized testing process already in place, or perform additional testing that would be difficult to do manually. Test automation is critical for continuous delivery and continuous testing.
In software development, CruiseControl is a Java-based framework for a continuous build process. It includes, but is not limited to, plugins for email notification, Ant, and various source control tools. A web interface is provided to view the details of the current and previous builds. It allows one to perform a continuous integration of any software development process.
Continuous integration (CI) is the practice of integrating source code changes frequently and ensuring that the integrated codebase is in a workable state.
Lean software development is a translation of lean manufacturing principles and practices to the software development domain. Adapted from the Toyota Production System, it is emerging with the support of a pro-lean subculture within the agile community. Lean offers a solid conceptual framework, values and principles, as well as good practices, derived from experience, that support agile organizations.
Extreme programming (XP) is an agile software development methodology used to implement software systems. This article details the practices used in this methodology. Extreme programming has 12 practices, grouped into four areas, derived from the best practices of software engineering.
Build automation is the practice of building software systems in an relatively unattended fashion. The build is configured to run with minimized or no software developer interaction and without using a developer's personal computer. Build automation encompasses the act of configuring the build system as well the resulting system itself.
AnthillPro is a software tool originally developed and released as one of the first continuous integration servers. AnthillPro automates the process of building code into software projects and testing it to verify that project quality has been maintained. Software developers are able to identify bugs and errors earlier by using AnthillPro to track, collate, and test changes in real time to a collectively maintained body of computer code.
Multi-stage continuous integration is a software development technique intended to achieve highly integrated parallel development activity while reducing the scope of integration problems.
In software engineering, a software development process or software development life cycle (SDLC) is a process of planning and managing software development. It typically involves dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or sequential steps or sub-processes to improve design and/or product management. The methodology may include the pre-definition of specific deliverables and artifacts that are created and completed by a project team to develop or maintain an application.
DevOps is a methodology in the software development and IT industry. Used as a set of practices and tools, DevOps integrates and automates the work of software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) as a means for improving and shortening the systems development life cycle. DevOps is complementary to agile software development; several DevOps aspects came from the agile way of working.
Test automation management tools are specific tools that provide a collaborative environment that is intended to make test automation efficient, traceable and clear for stakeholders. Test automation is becoming a cross-discipline
Continuous testing is the process of executing automated tests as part of the software delivery pipeline to obtain immediate feedback on the business risks associated with a software release candidate. Continuous testing was originally proposed as a way of reducing waiting time for feedback to developers by introducing development environment-triggered tests as well as more traditional developer/tester-triggered tests.
Continuous delivery (CD) is a software engineering approach in which teams produce software in short cycles, ensuring that the software can be reliably released at any time. It aims at building, testing, and releasing software with greater speed and frequency. The approach helps reduce the cost, time, and risk of delivering changes by allowing for more incremental updates to applications in production. A straightforward and repeatable deployment process is important for continuous delivery.
Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development, it advocates frequent releases in short development cycles, intended to improve productivity and introduce checkpoints at which new customer requirements can be adopted.
Continuous test-driven development (CTDD) is a software development practice that extends test-driven development (TDD) by means of automatic test execution in the background, sometimes called continuous testing.
Acceptance test–driven development (ATDD) is a development methodology based on communication between the business customers, the developers, and the testers. ATDD encompasses many of the same practices as specification by example (SBE), behavior-driven development (BDD), example-driven development (EDD), and support-driven development also called story test–driven development (SDD). All these processes aid developers and testers in understanding the customer's needs prior to implementation and allow customers to be able to converse in their own domain language.
iDempiere. Community Powered Enterprise, also known as OSGi + ADempiere, is an open source Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software that is fully navigable on PCs, tablets and smartphones, it also has customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) functions. It is in contrast to proprietary or most other open source ERP solutions driven only by a community of supporters.
In software deployment, an environment or tier is a computer system or set of systems in which a computer program or software component is deployed and executed. In simple cases, such as developing and immediately executing a program on the same machine, there may be a single environment, but in industrial use, the development environment and production environment are separated, often with several stages in between. This structured release management process allows phased deployment (rollout), testing, and rollback in case of problems.
