We recently got a question on the Sprouts Group about Continuous Integration (CI) and I thought I’d try to give it a quick explanation here.
The idea behind Continuous Integration is that you have a machine somewhere on the network that will check out, compile and test your application after almost every check-in. Whenever failures are encountered anywhere in that process, the entire team is notified. This helps us discover unexpected regressions or injections early which helps us pinpoint and address their root causes more efficiently.
This process can be useful in any project, but is especially helpful when working with teams that are all checking into different components of a larger project.
There are essentially three major problems when attempting to introduce ActionScript or Flex applications to typical CI systems:
- The Flash Player requires a visual window manager to execute your test harness (Usually X-Windows on Linux)
- The Flash Player does not give us the ability to capture all runtime exceptions, and when an uncaught runtime exception is encountered in the Debug Flash Player, a GUI dialog box is presented that must be manually clicked with a mouse in order to continue or abort execution. This can hang a typical CI set up, and result in an unhelpful “execution timeout” failure.
- It can be challenging to get a Linux machine properly configured to compile your ActionScript or Flex application, run your test harness, and collect trace output and error messages.
