By bloid
via alittlemadness.com
Published: Nov 22 2008 / 00:42
Continuing the theme, another misguided idea is that your CI build must never break. I think the real issue here is that this idea focuses on the wrong thing: it’s not really broken builds that matter, it’s why they break and what you do about it.



Comments
John_Idol replied ago:
it can break but you need to fix it as soon as you find out
Dave Newton replied ago:
Huh? If the build breaks locally why would you check it in to the CI server? Then everybody else's build breaks too when they check out new stuff (unless you have a two-stage commit process--which means the golden build never breaks). I'm confused.
jsankey replied ago:
My post does not suggest you would deliberately break the build in this way! When I mention local smoke testing I mean you run a build and test locally, making sure it passes before you commit. You certainly never commit /knowing/ you will break the build. I'm just saying that you shouldn't be hung up on trying to guarantee unbreakability, because it is usually impractical and has its own costs. I'll have to work on my clarity :).
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