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

24.4. Summary

Getting the right artifacts on to the right servers is the primary objective of deployment. This brief chapter looked at some simple practices you can employ to support the deployment of your solutions.

The following are the key points to take away from this chapter:

• Split out the test materials. You should completely decouple development and test materials from production:

  • Test components should be kept in separate libraries.

  • Non-production matter should be clearly identifiable through its name.

• Separate the components and libraries. Organize the components into libraries and packages that can be easily deployed and verified:

  • Components should only be deployed to the servers where they are required.

  • Libraries (and groups) that are likely to change should be separated to ease deployment.

• Classify the releases. There are many different ways in which your deployment strategy can be achieved. The following should be considered when determining the different packages required:

  • Full production deployment needs to follow the deployment concept.

  • Partial production deployment could be on a per-server basis or a mini-package basis.

  • Test releases (where necessary) should deploy all materials to allow quick turnaround of the environment.

• Identify every release with a "build" or "release" number. It is extremely important that each and every package has a release number. Irrespective of whether the package contains a full release, a hot-fix, or a patch, it should be identified to ensure ...