Continuous integration systems are a vital part of any Agile team because they help enforce the ideals of Agile development.

• Jenkins, a continuous build tool, enables teams to focus on their work by automating the build, artifact management, and deployment processes.
• Jenkins’ core functionality and flexibility allow it to fit in a variety of environments and can help streamline the development process for all stakeholders involved.

Continuous Integration (CI)

• What is it?
• What are the benefits?
• Continuous Build Systems

CI Defined –

Continuous Integration is a software development practice where members of a team integrate their work frequently, usually each person integrates at least daily – leading to multiple integrations per day. Each integration is verified by an automated build (including test) to detect integration errors as quickly as possible.

CI – What does it really mean?

At a regular frequency (ideally at every commit), the system is:

• Integrated
  All changes up until that point are combined into the project
• Built
  The code is compiled into an executable or package
• Tested
  Automated test suites are run
• Archived
  Versioned and stored so it can be distributed as is, if desired
• Deployed
  Loaded onto a system where the developers can interact with it

CI – Workflow

CI – Benefits

• Immediate bug detection
• No integration step in the lifecycle
• A deployable system at any given point
• Record of evolution of the project

CI – The tools

• Code Repositories
  • SVN, Mercurial, Git
• Continuous Build Systems
  • Jenkins, TeamCity, Bamboo, Cruise Control
• Test Frameworks
  • JUnit, xUnit, Mocha, Cucumber, CppUnit
• Artifact Repositories
  • Nexus, Artifactory, Archiva