An Integrated and Incremental BuildTest Cycle: It s Extreme

An Integrated and Incremental Build/Test Cycle: It's Extreme!

The fundamental principles involved here are simple and intuitive. And, amazingly, they work extreme ly well!

In case you haven't picked it up by now, the extreme references have to do with Extreme Programming (XP), a style of programming that was developed in the mid-1990s. XP stresses simplicity of design, frequent small releases, aggressively creating opportunities for communications, and ”in case you wondered when this section would discuss it ”testing.

XP tells you to test early and test often. In XP, it's not considered to be too early if you write the unit test even before you write the code!

This chapter isn't about XP or development methodologies. But the integrated build/deploy/test cycle that this chapter introduces is a big part of XP.

It's also important to know that these features weren't adopted because various Jakarta subprojects decided they want to "go XP." These approaches were developed and polished by teams of developers constantly looking for new and better ways to work together. The fact that the end result has characteristics of XP is really just a validation that those features of XP are useful.

To summarize: This chapter covers a build/deploy/test process that's used on a number of Jakarta subprojects and incorporates some elements of Extreme Programming. These processes involve using open source tools that have been developed and polished for just this purpose.

FOR MORE ABOUT EXTREME PROGRAMMING

Extreme Programming is a popular and spreading approach to software development. If you haven't been exposed to it, it's worth your time to learn more about it. Adopting just some of its processes can be useful.

A good place to begin would be at one of the many Web sites devoted to it. Two sites that we can recommend are

A Gentle Introduction to Extreme Programming at http://www.extremeprogramming.org

and The Extreme Programming Roadmap at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExtremeProgrammingRoadmap

Sams Publishing has also recently released what looks to be a good book on this topic:

Sams Teach Yourself Extreme Programming in 24 Hours (ISBN:0672324415) by Stewart Baird.