A lot of software development shops are turning to continuous integration strategies to verify integrations frequently and identify integration problems so that they can be quickly fixed. Continuous integration involves having an automated build system set up to run whenever new code is integrated. Automated unit tests are usually also run on each build to verify basic functionality. Martin Fowler wrote a great article (aptly entitled Continuous Integration) describing what continuous integration is and why it’s important. Many companies are now utilizing continuous integration servers such as CruiseControl, CruiseControl.NET, and Draco.NET to monitor their source code repository, usually managed by a software configuration management tool, and commence the build process when changes are committed. Of course, as Fowler points out, some people prefer the manual approach, and Jim Shore gives an excellent argument as to why Continuous Integration is an Attitude, Not a Tool (the title, and the article contents, are great!).

Whether a team chooses to utilize a continuous integration server or manually kick off their builds, reporting on the success or failure of the build and unit test suite is a crucial component to successfully adopting continuous integration. Specifically, it’s important for everyone in the group to be aware of the state of the mainline build. Many teams use wikis or other intranet web sites to report the status of each build. I have been to several companies that have large LCD panels hanging in the engineering department to display this information. A website is a great way to share information for groups that are geographically distributed. On the other end of the spectrum, in cases where all engineers are co-located, some teams have found more creative approaches to communicating build status. Fowler gave anecdotes of different colored lava lamps and even dancing rabbits being used as visual indicators of the build status. Although I found this amusing, I found it a bit hard to believe (we at AccuRev use a more subdued approach to report build status…email notification of the build status might seem a bit boring, but it works for us!). And, I found using a physical object to be limiting, especially as teams become more and more distributed. Well, in researching continuous integration, I ran across Mike Swanson’s blog posting about continuous integration and learned about the Ambient Orb manufactured by Ambient Devices. Now, this is cool stuff!!! The orb is a sphere of frosted glass that glows in a wide variety of colors and is also capable of visual effects such as pulsing and brightening and dimming. And here’s the best part…the orb has wireless pager electronics built-in. This means that the color of the orb can automatically be changed as the build status changes! And it means that, even if there are several distributed groups working on the same code, they can all use a funky object to see the build status. Apparently, there are similarly controlled lava lamps too, and other neat toys to make developers both productive and “retroactively” happy…