Thus far we’ve been doing our projects solo, a single person talking all the code and all the possible problems or successes that could possibly befall us. For a class this kind of approach is normal, and is something we’ve done countless times before now, but what happens when you throw more people into the mix. For that we have to throw a new tool into the mix as well, even up the score. Welcome, Continuous Integration.
Continuous Integration is in our case a tool we use to monitor our code and builds to ensure that they come together well in a group setting. Our ICS 413 class is using Hudson, a system that can look at code for changes and will automatically build and test the file then report it to the system it runs on. Using this we can have multiple people working on the project and see the results of each update by each person and/or the parts where problems can occur.
Our class has its own Hudson site here, where we are working on our next project as a team. While I won’t go into the details of the project itself (an entry for another day I’m afraid), I can say this is my first experience in partnered coding and it is a fascinating one.
Using this me and Kimberly (her site here) have been working together and noticing all the cool powers given to us through Hudson. At first setting up all the standards was a little trial and error based but after working that out, we found it very convenient. What Hudson does is regular build after noticing change in programming; if there is an error we get emailed about the problem and then can go to the site and check on what failed. At the same time Hudson keeps statistics to us about build and the updates without the need to go through the Google code sites. Other than the hefty amount of emails that we’ve gotten from Hudson itself (due to us and several of our classmates having issues with builds both intentional and unintentional), the Hudson tool gives us a lot of information about our work and helps us work out issues that may occur between us as a group.
I can’t say we have a lot of experience using it yet, as we have just started our coding portion and our schedules both prove to prevent us from progressing very quickly but Hudson is helpful in keeping what we can do organized and recorded, making it a useful tool for any project that needs this kind of watchful eye. With our powers combined, hopefully our project will come out ok, and when I write about it I can say Hudson worked in our favor, but that story will be another day.
(Note: this entry may be updated after more experience is obtained with Hudson)
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