On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 01:27:51PM -0000, Vincent Massol wrote:
>
> --- Ron Jeffries wrote:
> >
> > How will this program solve the problem of people not caring about
> > the build being broken?
> >
>
> It doesn't! What it does is remove the "problem" in the first place :-)
>
> Let's try to remove all our existing knowledge: if you didn't have to
> care about the build, why would you?
>
> What the developer will still need to care about is committing
> frequently. This is the important part because this is what is causing
> the integration to happen.
Vincent, are you emphasizing the "don't care" part or the "broken build"
part?
I have worked on a project where people didn't care that they broke the
build. They frequently didn't know they broke the build, since they
weren't building everything or refreshing the code base from CVS. They
also didn't care that they broke the build and caused enormous
disruption to the project. So, they broke the build out of both ignorance
and apathy. And they were often belligerantly defensive if you spoke to
them about it.
This was not an XP project, and the management approach had been to
throw bodies into the mix to speed up development. There was little
understanding that programmers were not fungible.
In this environment, running Cruise Control with email notification
smoothed the belligerance, because they were notified by a machine
rather than a person. It did not solve the problem, however, and builds
were still broken and left that way for hours, even overnight.
A system that would reject checkins that broke the build would probably
not fix much under these circumstances. Those developers that didn't
care, would still not care. I think they would just not integrate as
frequently (which was already not frequently enough).
There would also be technical problems, as these same developers tended
to be the ones who checked files in one at a time, rather than using the
power of CVS to notice what had changed.
I think there is no technological solution to "don't care." I would
have preferred to get Ron Jeffries to have a nice quiet chat with the
offenders.
- George
http://www.idiacomputing.com/
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