Continuous Integration: 5 Best Practices, Best Tools, & Benefits

Source – cigniti.com

In the DevOps world, we hear Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Continuous Delivery, Continuous Monitoring, Continuous Planning, and many more forms of ‘Continuous’. These are the key for improving DevOps maturity.

Continuous improvement and integration is the culture required in DevOps for providing better services to customers. An organization might be the most mature Organization currently, but if it does not invest in continuous improvement, very soon competitors will overtake it in this race of DevOps and Digital – which is key for delivering Business Value.

In this article, we will talk about some best practices, tools, and benefits of Continuous Integration. Continuous Integration is the development process of getting early feedback, which is key for the success of DevOps. Failure is the stepping stone for success, failing fast accelerates your journey to success, and Continuous Integration helps us fail fast.

5 Best Practices in Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration is the first stepping stone in Continuous Delivery Pipeline. Automating testing through Continuous Integration improves code quality. Implemented with best practices, CI helps in getting early feedback, increases transparency and sets the stage for better Continuous Delivery thus improving DevOps maturity. Following are a few best practices for implementing a successful CI practice:

1. Manage Source Code:
   1. Centralized version control repository: Source code should be managed using centralized version control repository.
   2. Code Review: Two levels of Code Review must be performed.
   3. Compile, Unit Test and Static Code Analysis: Code should be Built, Unit tested, and Analyzed using Static Code Analysis tools before pushing to the central repository.
   4. Code Commit: Code changes must be pushed to central repository multiple times a day or at least once a day to the main line.
2. Manage Software Binaries:
   1. Binary Repository Manager: Software Binaries must be centralized using the Binary repository manager, and software dependencies between teams must be seamlessly shared.
   2. Vulnerabilities and Compliance: Software Binaries must be scanned for security vulnerabilities and license compliance. The build should be failed if vulnerabilities are found in software binaries.
   3. Publish Builds: Build artifacts should be published to a Binary repository to be able to share seamlessly with dependent module builds.
   4. Deployment Automation: Deployment of build artifacts to environments should happen from the binary repository for better security and reliability.

3. Build Automation:
   1. VCS Trigger: Builds must be triggered for every code change done in source control repository.
   2. Unit Tests and Static Code Analysis: Static Code Analysis and Unit Tests must be run for every check-in.
   3. CI Job as code: Build configuration must be maintained as the code.
   4. Feedback: Notifications must be sent to developers on build failures, SCA criteria not met, and Unit Tests Failure, Security Vulnerabilities, and License Compliance.
4. Reduce Build Time:
   1. Modularizing code and Micro Services: Independently buildable components must be identified and the builds simplified by executing them in smaller sizes to minimize the Build time.
   2. Dependency Management: Binaries from Binary Repository Manager setup must be resolved behind the company firewall to reduce the time taken to download from external portals.
   3. Collocation of machines and repositories: Build machines, source code repository and Binary repository must be collocated – this creates the least network latency for pulling source code and Binaries.
5. Automate Deployment and Tests:
   1. Automated Environment: Environment Provisioning and Configuration management using tools with code from Version control repository must be used.
   2. Deployment Automation: Deployment must be automated by identifying simple steps, configuring entire workflows, and implementing the flow using script or tool.
   3. CI Build Tested: The CI Build must be self-tested in a production like environment.