Web Operations

Getting Started

Continuous deployment is controversial. When most people first hear about continuous deployment, they think I'm advocating low-quality code (http://www.developsense.com/2009/03/50-deployments-day-and-perpetual-beta.html) or an undisciplined Cowboy-coding development process (http://lastinfirstout.blogspot.com/2009/03/continuous-deployment-debate.html). On the contrary, I believe that continuous deployment requires tremendous discipline and can greatly enhance software quality, by applying a rigorous set of standards to every change to prevent regressions, outages, or harm to key business metrics. Another common reaction I hear to continuous deployment is that it's too complicated, it's time-consuming, or it's hard to prioritize. It's this latter fear that I'd like to address head-on in this chapter. Although it is true that the full system we use to support deploying 50 times a day at IMVU is elaborate, it certainly didn't start that way. By making a few simple investments and process changes, any development team can be on their way to continuous deployment. It's the journey, not the destination, which counts. Here's the why and how, in five steps.

Step 1: Continuous Integration Server

This is the backbone of continuous deployment. We need a centralized place where all automated tests (unit tests, functional tests, integration tests, everything) can be run and monitored upon every commit. Many fine, free software tools are available to make this easy—I have had success ...