Question

I’m curious. I’m looking into creating a CI server and wondering, after the first couple of obvious tasks, what else can an automated build do?

The tasks that I’m aware of (not in any order):

• Compile (debug/release versions)
• Code style conformance
• Automated tests (unit/integration/etc.)
• Code coverage
• Version incrementing
• Deployment

I’m not looking for the names of software, the build engine to use, or anything like that; just the repetitive and (maybe) important tasks that can be automated to make the build process ridiculously simple from an end-user perspective.

Answer 1

The simple answer to this, is basically anything that a script can be written for.

For example if you are using CruiseControl, anything that you can do from an ant script can be automated; and that includes calling other (not necessarily ant scripts as well).

That being said, you’ve got most bases covered in your initial list. To that I would add

• Generation of documentation
• Repository maintencnace and backup operations
• Auto-update company website, e.g. whenever there’s a new release of software, documentation is updated, etc
• Reports, e.g. aggregate and summarise bug tracker issues and activity per project/ product

HTH