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No, the time/effort to make a build with a working CI system is zero, plus any activities that remain manual by design (e.g. installations that require physical
by HelloNurse 9y ago
No, the time/effort to make a build with a working CI system is zero, plus any activities that remain manual by design (e.g. installations that require physical access to the server).
The uncertainty is only about the feasibility and cost of implementing CI: this is one of the rare cases in which the benefits of software can be measured objectively, easily and in advance.
- noway421 9y agoI would disagree, you still have the build time. And even if engineer doesn't do anything during that time, they are still occupied. No one would switch tasks during 10 minute build, there's just nothing you can do during such a short timeframe. In that case, in terms of business costs, it doesn't matter if engineer is busy or not during that period: they are still not gonna be doing more.
- HelloNurse 9y agoThe alternative to spending X minutes waiting for a CI build is spending slightly more than X minutes executing a manual build with a nonzero chance of time-wasting mistakes, not doing nothing. Not waiting for a build means not testing it, in which case a manual non-build of an uninteresting software configuration seems attractively elegant but a CI system still provides value by recording that a certain configuration compiles and by making the built application available for later use in case it's needed.
- noway421 9y agoThat is indeed true, CI is way less error prone, thanks. Having a build ready to go is quite handy too. What do you mean by "not testing it" "seems attractively elegant"? Testing a build is still a must, although that ends up to be manual testing usually (unit tests don't assure much, integration take a lot of engineering effort for setting up and writing, especially if they were not taken care of from the start).