Automation
Automating releasing and testing is a common task. Both tend to have a lot of steps, so creating a consistent place and way to run tests and releases can improve overall reliability. Without this, a build or test could happen on a differently configured machine each time and introduce unknown variables. Incomplete configuration, steps done out of order, or incorrectly typed commands have caused many an outage, so automating this process is incredibly valuable.
Automation of testing and releasing usually requires automating three things:
- Building: The actual creation of an artifact from source code
- Testing: Validating the created artifact
- Distributing: Sending the artifact to the user
Automation exists because people are forgetful. All three of these things can be automated using similar tools. Almost all of these tools are essentially job runners that run on an event queue. That queue can be filled by actions, such as code committed to a version control repository or a button click...
