It’s not exactly a secret that I have technology ADD. It’s not because I don’t have enough to do. It’s not because the technologies I use on a regular basis are boring. It’s especially not because I need more challenges. Like most technology professionals, I have the opposite problems. I’m over-stimulated. There’s too much I don’t know but I need to know already and now I’m drowning… *glub glub glub*
Only pointing this out because my posts tend to vary from open source projects I dabble in, to jQuery, and now continuous integration. I’ve only really worked on one team where we had a passable CI strategy. I’ve never been on or heard details about a team that had a great setup.
And Now For Some Whining
For the past 3 years I’ve been in TFS land. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever used for source control. It is the worst I’ve used for just about everything else. You can’t really integrate with TFS unless you have lots of time, no immediate need to do so and a lots of patience. As of TFS 2008, I don’t really see the solution I’m looking for.
What I Want
I want source control to integrate with planning and management activities related to the development process. I want all of that to tie in nicely with continuous integration builds and tools to deploy those builds. I’d also like the system to have the appropriate amount of chattiness which lets the user decide how they get notified of what’s happening. Yeah. I know. It’s not really out there. At least not yet. I don’t mind building parts, but only if the tool provides clean and appropriate integration points and opportunities for extensibility. Yes, I am chasing the holy grail of continuous integration. I’m not sure it exists but that won’t stop me from searching.
Why Should You Care?
Because I assume that if my team faces the same challenges yours does, we have similar wants and needs. So as I go through this series describing for you the steps I took in trying to get there, you can learn from the stuff that works well and laugh at my mistakes (and maybe learn from those too).
Where I’m Starting
Well, I don’t want to give it all away, but my next post will go into detail about my experience so far with ESXi, Debian and Git.
Tags: continuous integration, ci, esxi, debian, git