Continuous Integration Step-by-step
php|tek Chicago 2009

Who am I ?
Michelangelo van Dam
Independent Enterprise PHP consultant
Co-founder PHPBelgium
Mail me at dragonbe [at] gmail [dot] com
Follow me on http://twitter.com/DragonBe
Read my articles on http://dragonbe.com
See my profile on http://linkedin.com/in/michelangelovandam
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Topics
• Development practices • PHP Toolset
- Live Development - Subversion
- Shared Drive - PHPDocumentor
- Staged Environments - PHPUnit
- Version Control - Xdebug
- Automation - Phing
- Continuous - CI
Integration
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Development Practices
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Live Development
• development on “live” server
• errors, failures and warnings exposed
• potential security risks
• no way to revert back (w/o backups)
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Shared drive
• using a shared drive to store code base
• risk of overwriting each other’s work
• code is uploaded to “live” server for testing
• quick fixes occur on “live” environments for speed
• same issues as with “live development”
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Staged Environments
• separate platform for each “stage” of development
- LOCAL for local development
- DEV to combine all development of all developers
- TEST to test the application(s)
- ACC for acceptance by the customer(s)
- PROD as production or “live” system
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Version Control
• each change of code is registered (revision)
• code conflicts are detected
• release management possible
• reverting to previous revisions
• backup
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Automation
• write once, run many
• is less vulnerable to human error
- humans still write scripts to automate processes !
• can be scheduled, triggered, pushed and pulled
• behaves always in the same way
- so results can be predictable
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Continuous Integration
• automated process
- build
- test
- deploy
• in a continuous way
- after each commit into versioning system
- at specific intervals (e.g. nightly builds)
• always a “deployable” release
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PHP Toolset
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Versioning your code
• Subversion
- more options then CVS
- can be integrated with GIT
• easy set up / maintain
- all OSes (Windows, Mac, Linux, ...)
- great support in tools (IDE and regular clients)
• good documentation (http://subversion.tigris.org)
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Document your code
• PHPDocumentor
www.phpdocumentor.org
• provides immediate API
documentation
• based on in-code
documentation
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Check your code
• PHPLint
• checks your code on coding errors
• creates documentation based on source code
• http://www.icosaedro.it/phplint/
• or use php -l <file.php>
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Test your code
• PHPUnit (phpunit.de)
- family of the xUnit testing suites
• easy to learn, hard to do ...
• easy to install (using PEAR)
• provides extra features
- code duplication detection (cdd)
- code coverage reporting (with Xdebug)
- test driven documentation
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Debug your code
• Xdebug (xdebug.org)
- advanced debug reporting
- profiling features
• Integrates well with other tools (like PHPUnit)
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Validate your code
• PHP_CodeSniffer
• PEAR package
• checks your code for coding standards
• http://pear.php.net/package/PHP_CodeSniffer
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Build your code
• Phing (phing.info)
• alternate for ANT
• building is more automating previous steps
• ensures you’ll run all steps the same way
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Let’s automate this all !
• CruiseControl as your CI system
• phpUnderControl has a more detailed interface
• uses Phing build files to process all previous steps
• generates reports for each stage
• triggered by
- commits into the repository
- scheduled building processes (e.g. each night)
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Example phing build.xml
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Conclusion
CI automates manual processes
continues to do so on each cycle (“continuous”)
reports on successes and failures
frees up versioning system resources
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Credits
Lomo elePHPant
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakobwesthoff/3231273333/
ElePHPant to the rescue
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tobiasschlitt/2733763988/
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License
This presentation is released under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
You are free:
- to share : to copy, distribute and transmit the work
- to remix : to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
- attribution :You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor
- share alike : If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work
only under the same, similar or a compatible license
See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
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Thank you
Slides available on
http://slideshare.net/DragonBe
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