REFERENCE LIBRARY
In this course, we'll explore the concept of continuous integration within the context of DataFlex. You might be wondering, what exactly is continuous integration? Well, it's a key component of the broader DevOps approach. In essence, DevOps aims to enhance communication and collaboration within development teams.
Continuous Integration, or CI for short, specifically helps developers by continuously building various contributions to a codebase. This practice is particularly valuable in agile workflows, where the need for rapid and efficient testing is paramount. Surprisingly, CI isn't limited to large teams; even small teams or individual developers can benefit greatly from its automation, saving a significant amount of time.
Now, let's break down the three fundamental steps involved in CI:
These three steps collectively form the build process, and typically, a build process is executed on a dedicated build server. The primary responsibility of this server is to compile the application (or sometimes a library) in an isolated environment.
In this course, we'll be using my personal laptop for demonstration purposes. However, if you plan to deploy your applications in a production environment, I highly recommend setting up a separate Windows server. This separation is crucial because your local applications on your laptop might interfere with the build process, which we want to avoid.
To summarize, in this course, we'll guide you through setting up the entire CI toolchain from scratch. This includes establishing a Git server, configuring Jenkins as our build server, and employing DF Unit as our unit testing framework. While this course primarily focuses on setting up these components on a single Windows system, if you're interested in utilizing build nodes or Docker for more complex setups, please don't hesitate to seek guidance in the forums.
Now, let's dive right in and get started with the course.
