Design – Build – Run: Applied Practices and Principles for Production-Ready Software Development

3.3. Build, Release, and Regular Integration Mobilization

Although build and release can be considered as two separate entities (that is, the tasks can be separated and executed in parallel), I've chosen to include them together. The purpose of build, release, and regular integration is to take all the development artifacts and compile them into a single release.

Releases will have different requirements, so they will have different packaging inputs. The build and release processes should take what has already been defined and execute all the best practice tools, as well as all the unit tests and integration tests, thereby providing the initial regression testing capability.

Builds should be done on a regular basis to bring everything together. The build cycle and inputs change as the project progresses. Initially, the latest version of the solution is taken into a build. As testing starts, a more structured approach to individual fixes or groups of fixes needs to be adopted. The build and regular integration processes should define the relevant approaches.

The activities that will be conducted are similar to those in the development mobilization phase, so I am not going to go into details that have been previously discussed, but instead I'll focus on the specifics that relate to build, release, and regular integration. The following describes the key activities involved:

• Defining the process constraints — The build process constraints should list all the tools and technologies ...