While I was reading “The Reuse Trap In Software Design” I found myself thinking,”Me too! Me too!” like a giddy kid on the playground that’s found a new pal with a mutual interest in “pet snakes and/or tarantulas.” As with many of the problems Basil writes about in his blog, I experienced the same problem, investigated it and found the same root causes, and came to many of the same conclusions as those outlined. My preferred technique for getting out of this quagmire is a little bit different than Basil’s and I describe it in this article.

In terms of the sheer number of moving parts, extravagance, and complexity, the build-tool landscape is one of bells and whistles that can be a little tough to stay on top of. There are a few important pieces of a robust and valuable build, no matter what tools you use to achieve it, and by breaking the build into modules or categories, we can make a little bit of sense out of the chaos.

A lot gets written about Continuous Integration, particularly on which is the best visual cue to let you know your build is broken or that a test is failing – lava lamps, Beta Brights, Ambient Orbs, and some even suggest traffic lights. But aside from this extraneous (at least to business) nerd-banter, a lot of what I find written about the actual topic of CI is fluffy, ivory tower, or pie-in-the-sky jibber-jabber that leaves out important parts of the big picture or confuses people more than it helps. In hopes of clearing up confusion on what exactly CI is and how it’s supposed to work, I’m ripping out a description that I wrote for a client proposal recently (so my apologizes for the dry-tone). I hope sheds some light on the true nature of CI, why it’s important and how to implement it from a birds-eye point of view.

[Y]ou might suppose going to the trouble of creating automated tests, simply for your own devices, might be a bit overkill. As it turns out, it is worth it, and it’s going to save you a lot of time in the long run.