Gated commit

Last updated

A gated commit,gated check-in [1] or pre-tested commit [2] is a software integration pattern that reduces the chances for breaking a build (and often its associated tests) by committing changes into the main branch of version control. This pattern can be supported by a continuous integration (CI) server. [3]

A design pattern is the re-usable form of a solution to a design problem. The idea was introduced by the architect Christopher Alexander and has been adapted for various other disciplines, notably software engineering.

In the field of software development, the term build is similar to that of any other field. That is, the construction of something that has an observable and tangible result. Historically, build has often referred either to the process of converting source code files into standalone software artifact(s) that can be run on a computer, or the result of doing so. However, this is not the case with technologies such as Perl, Ruby or Python which are examples of interpreted languages.

A component of software configuration management, version control, also known as revision control or source control, is the management of changes to documents, computer programs, large web sites, and other collections of information. Changes are usually identified by a number or letter code, termed the "revision number", "revision level", or simply "revision". For example, an initial set of files is "revision 1". When the first change is made, the resulting set is "revision 2", and so on. Each revision is associated with a timestamp and the person making the change. Revisions can be compared, restored, and with some types of files, merged.

To perform a gated commit the software developer must request a gated commit from the CI server before committing the actual changes to a central location. The CI server merges the local changes with the head of the master branch and performs the validations (build and tests) that make up the gate. So the developer can see if his or her changes break the build without actually committing the changes. A commit to the central location will only be allowed if the gates are cleared.

As an alternative this pattern can be realized using different branches in version control. For example, GitHub can force all commits to a branch B to be merge commits from pull requests which have successfully been built on the CI server and are up-to-date (i.e. based or rebased on B). [4]

Branching, in version control and software configuration management, is the duplication of an object under version control so that modifications can occur in parallel along multiple branches.

GitHub is an American company that provides hosting for software development version control using Git. It is a subsidiary of Microsoft, which acquired the company in 2018 for $7.5 billion. It offers all of the distributed version control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git as well as adding its own features. It provides access control and several collaboration features such as bug tracking, feature requests, task management, and wikis for every project.

See also

Related Research Articles

In software engineering, continuous integration (CI) is the practice of merging all developers' working copies to a shared mainline several times a day. Grady Booch first proposed the term CI in his 1991 method, although he did not advocate integrating several times a day. Extreme programming (XP) adopted the concept of CI and did advocate integrating more than once per day – perhaps as many as tens of times per day.

In software development, distributed version control is a form of version control in which the complete codebase, including its full history, is mirrored on every developer's computer. This enables automatic management branching and merging, speeds up of most operations, improves the ability to work offline, and does not rely on a single location for backups.

A source-code repository is a file archive and web hosting facility for source code of software, documentation, web pages, and other works, accessible either publicly or privately. They are often used by open-source software projects and other multi-developer projects to maintain revision and version history, or version control. Many repositories provide a bug tracking system, and offer release management, mailing lists, and wiki-based project documentation. Software authors generally retain their copyright when software is posted to a code hosting facilities.

SiteMesh is a Java web application development framework originally developed by now-defunct open source project OpenSymphony. The code is now hosted on GitHub however there have been no changes to the since 2015.

Team Foundation Server is a Microsoft product that provides source code management, reporting, requirements management, project management, automated builds, lab management, testing and release management capabilities. It covers the entire application lifecycle, and enables DevOps capabilities. TFS can be used as a back-end to numerous integrated development environments (IDEs) but is tailored for Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse on all platforms.

Bitbucket is a web-based version control repository hosting service owned by Atlassian, for source code and development projects that use either Mercurial or Git revision control systems. Bitbucket offers both commercial plans and free accounts. It offers free accounts with an unlimited number of private repositories as of September 2010. Bitbucket integrates with other Atlassian software like Jira, HipChat, Confluence and Bamboo.

Multi-stage continuous integration is a software development technique intended to achieve highly integrated parallel development activity while reducing the scope of integration problems.

Bamboo is a continuous integration and continuous deployment server developed by Atlassian. Although initially available both as an on-premises and cloud computing service, in May 2016 it was announced that the cloud version would be discontinued by end of January 2017.

Gerrit (software) Free web-based team code collaboration tool

Gerrit is a free, web-based team code collaboration tool. Software developers in a team can review each other's modifications on their source code using a Web browser and approve or reject those changes. It integrates closely with Git, a distributed version control system.

Plastic SCM is a cross-platform commercial distributed version control tool developed by Códice Software Inc. It is available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other operating systems. It includes a command-line tool, native GUIs, diff and merge tool and integration with a number of IDEs. It is a full version control stack not based on Git.

Jenkins (software) Free and open source automation server

Jenkins is a free and open source automation server written in Java. Jenkins helps to automate the non-human part of the software development process, with continuous integration and facilitating technical aspects of continuous delivery. It is a server-based system that runs in servlet containers such as Apache Tomcat. It supports version control tools, including AccuRev, CVS, Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Perforce, TD/OMS, ClearCase and RTC, and can execute Apache Ant, Apache Maven and sbt based projects as well as arbitrary shell scripts and Windows batch commands. The creator of Jenkins is Kohsuke Kawaguchi. Released under the MIT License, Jenkins is free software.

Travis CI is a hosted continuous integration service used to build and test software projects hosted at GitHub.

BuildHive was a free cloud-hosted continuous integration service for GitHub projects, based on Jenkins.

TeamCity chrome

TeamCity is a build management and continuous integration server from JetBrains. It was first released on October 2, 2006 and is commercial software and licensed under a proprietary license: a freemium license for up to 100 build configurations and three free Build Agent licenses are available. Open Source projects may request a free license.

Probo is an User Automated Testing tool that provides continuous integration, workflow organization and quality assurance using the same tool for project managers and developers.

Buddy is a web-based and self-hosted continuous integration and delivery software for Git developers that can be used to build, test and deploy web sites and applications with code from GitHub, Bitbucket and GitLab. It employs Docker containers with pre-installed languages and frameworks for builds, alongside DevOps, monitoring and notification actions.

Pop PHP Framework

The Pop PHP Framework a free and open source PHP Web framework that was created by Nick Sagona. It is distributed under the BSD License and hosted on GitHub. The framework is intended to be utilized for rapid application development, with an emphasis on web applications.

References

  1. ↑ "Set build triggers on TFS". Visual Studio . Retrieved 2016-06-18.
  2. ↑ "Pre-Tested (Delayed) Commit - TeamCity 9.x Documentation - Confluence". confluence.jetbrains.com. Retrieved 2016-11-25.
  3. ↑ "Build Pattern: Gated Commit" . Retrieved 2014-08-18.
  4. ↑ "Enabling required status checks". GitHub user documentation. Retrieved 2016-06-18.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.