The Mythical Green Build

By -
When we first started down the Automated Build and Testing scene, we became very addicted to that wonderful thing: the green build. We installed tools like Jenkins or later GoCD or even rolled our own, but we loved the power of that green build. We said: ship it! Let's get that code out in the wild! Look it passed all the tests!

Why Mythical?

So we shipped that code and something broke. People in our company didn't like us too much. Whether it was customer service or whether it was sales for us breaking stuff in the middle of their demo. But all we could say was: it was green! So, evidently, when you have 100 tests on a 200,000 line code base, there just isn't a lot of confidence that something isn't going to break. So what does a green build really mean? That is why it is mythical. We have no real "green build" if the tests are not effective and have the "area coverage". 

When we write tests, we need to cover areas of the code, not code coverage. We need to make sure hat they cover what is required, not that my setter actually sets a variable. Green builds are easy: return true. Confident builds are hard. Write effective tests. Take pride in what is done. Show and prove that code is ready to be shipped and we will always have the confidence to ship our code at any time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not All CI Solutions Are Created Equal

By -
Are there any of you out there who have attempted Continuous Integration, Delivery, or Deployment, and had it fail? Have you ever just given up because it was over complicating things? People were not happy? Believe it or not, this is very common. I have heard many stories where organizations have failed at implementing CI. So first and foremost I want to say: it's ok! We all recognize the value of what we get from doing CI, but in reality, in practice we need to be more practical and pragmatic in our approach. May I offer some counsel. Implement Countinuous Confidence This may seem strange at first, and probably expected since this blog is all about Continuous Confidence, but really, truly, this is he first step. Focus on your confidence points.  Generally, when I see failure in the CI world, it isn't the methodology, but rather the lack of confidence in the process that is causing the problem. Generally speaking, I see people wanting to implement CI in here organization becau...
Read more

Stop Talking About Continuous Integration

By -
There. I have said it. This is the elephant in the room. For years, we as Dev Ops professionals, and as an industry have been talking about how to up our game using Continuous Integration.  We talk about our Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) or how we need to improve our QA Processes and deliver faster and with higher quality. We start implementing Continuous Integration and we try to implement Continuous Delivery and or Deployment. And you know what happens? We fail to do it the way others did. There are some examples that we try to wedge ourselves into. We try hard to mimic what others have done. And so we fail over time. Some of us, we get to where we want to be, but others...yeah...let's not talk about it! So what should we be doing? We should be talking about Continuous Confidence. We should be talking about what processes and what things are we doing that will help us get better confidence in our product. What will give others better confidence in our product. When...
Read more

Legacy Code: What to do About it

By -
There are a lot of questions around legacy code. If we ask any developer who is new to the organization, they will most likely say: REFACTOR! Our first knee jerk reaction is to not touch the legacy code, so we kind of dismiss the new developer saying that. However, we should look more deeply at what they are saying. The Code is Messy Generally, when dealing with legacy code, it is messy! Let's face it, when we start writing code, we ignore certain design patterns for others because there isn't a need. Once we get large enough, something has to be done about it. We need to stay focussed. If we feel that we are assigning one senior developer to fix legacy code, while 50 others are still using it, we will,never fix the code. Continuous Confidence comes from looking at the code and feeling calm not erratic. The Code is Antiquated When we hear refactor, His might mean as well that the code doesn't follow today's standards. So how do we make it so? We need to refactor...
Read more