Building the Code

You need a system to build your code, and you need somewhere to build it.

This chapter discusses build systems, systems that convert source code into various types of artifacts, and systems that check code validity, among other things. The chapter will cover the following topics:

• Why do we build code? Here, we discuss the purpose of building code.
• The many faces of build systems. Here, we will explore the different build systems and how they affect our DevOps work.
• The Jenkins build server. Jenkins is a flexible open source build server that grows with your needs. Some alternatives to Jenkins will be explored as well.
• Managing build dependencies. You need many bits and pieces to compile code into usable artifacts. These are called build dependencies
• Collating quality measures. Here, we discuss ways of measuring code quality
• Taking build errors seriously. Here...