The document discusses build infrastructure and how it helps software development processes. It describes the five pillars of build infrastructure as one-click builds, build automation, continuous integration, automated testing, and automated deployment. It provides examples of how Unity Technologies implemented these pillars over time to improve their development cycles and scale their team. Python is highlighted as an excellent language for writing development tools to support build infrastructure.

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BUILD
INFRASTRUCTURE
What It Is, Why You Need It,
and How to Use Python to
Fuel It

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COPYRIGHT 2015 @ UNITY
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WHAT IS BUILD
ENGINEERING?
BUILD ENGINEERING
IS THE GLUE THAT
HOLDS THE
SOFTWARE
DEVELOPMENT
PROCESS
TOGETHER.

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EXAMPLES OF BUILD
ENGINEERING
• Choosing, configuring, customizing, and
maintaining a CI server
• Applying/optimizing development models
(branch-based, patch-based, etc)
• Build optimizations (distributed builds, bulk
builds, etc)
• … and much more

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COPYRIGHT 2015 @ UNITY
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WHY DO I CARE?

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• Na’Tosha J. Bard
• Copenhagen, Denmark
• Engineering Tools Lead at Unity
Technologies (5+ years)
• Open-Source & Linux Enthusiast
• Married
• 2 cats
ABOUT THE
SPEAKER

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FOR YOUR REFERENCE
Slides will be available here:
http://natoshabard.com/speaking
Keep in touch:
Twitter: @natosha_bard
E-mail: natosha@gmail.com

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WHAT IS UNITY?

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WHAT IS UNITY?
• Game Engine & Content Creation Toolkit
• Editor for Mac OS X & Windows
• Experimental build for Linux
• Runtime ported to 22 platforms
• Mostly written in C++
• Gameplay scripts written in C#
• Scripting engine for gameplay code built on
top of Mono

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BUILD
ENGINEERING AT
UNITY
TECHNOLOGIES

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2010
• Unstable SVN Server
• All developers commit directly to trunk
• Unstable CI Server
• 6 VisualStudio and Xcode projects wrapped
in Perl
• Automated Tests nightly on 2 platforms
• 4 machines for building
• Deployment scripts running from developer
machines
• No automatic verification of deployed builds

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2015
• DVCS with Mercurial
• Branch-based development
• Project files generated with Jamplus
• Stable CI Solution (Internally-Developed)
• Automated tests running on developer branches
and on our mainline on various platforms
• Build cloud of over 200 virtual and physical
machines
• Web-based publishing portal for deploying
builds

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COPYRIGHT 2015 @ UNITY
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OUR RELEASE
CYCLES WENT
FROM AS LONG AS
18 MONTHS
TO EVERY 3
MONTHS
WHILE OUR
DEVELOPMENT
TEAM GREW 400%.

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FOUNDATION OF
BUILD
INFRASTRUCTURE

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THE 5 PILLARS OF
BUILD
INFRASTRUCTURE
• ONE-CLICK BUILDS
• BUILD AUTOMATION
• CONTINUOUS
INTEGRATION
• AUTOMATED TESTING
• AUTOMATED
DEPLOYMENT

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WHAT ON EARTH
DOES THIS ALL HAVE
TO DO WITH
PYTHON?
PYTHON IS AN
AMAZING LANGUAGE
FOR WRITING
DEVELOPMENT
TOOLS.

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ONE-CLICK BUILDS:
BUILDING YOUR
SOFTWARE WITH
JUST ONE CLICK

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BENEFITS OF ONE-CLICK BUILDS
• KISS principle
• Build early, Build often
• Groundwork for other software
development principles

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GETTING STARTED WITH ONE-
CLICK BUILDS
• Depends on your application
• Possible Solutions: SCons, Waf
• Cohesive buildsystem
• Keep platform-dependent issues in mind!

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WHAT UNITY DOES
• Currently using Jamplus and Perl
• Didn’t find a good Python-based tool that
met all of our requirements :-(
• Migrating to Gradle
• http://gradle.org/migrating-a-large-c-
codebase-to-gradle/

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BUILD
AUTOMATION:
A BUILD SERVER
TO RUN YOUR ONE-
CLICK BUILDS

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BENEFITS OF BUILD AUTOMATION
• Verification
• Parallelization
• Groundwork for other software
development principles

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GETTING STARTED WITH BUILD
AUTOMATION
• Depends on feature set you need
• Possible Solution: Buildbot
• Give careful thought to buildserver/
buildsystem configuration split

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HOW UNITY DOES IT
• Custom solution built on top of Buildbot -
“Katana”
• https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/katana/
• http://mariangemarcano.blogspot.dk/
• Katana’s Build Cloud configured with Salt
• http://saltstack.com/

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CONTINUOUS
INTEGRATION:
CONTINUOUSLY
RUN THOSE
AUTOMATED
BUILDS

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BENEFITS OF CONTINUOUS
INTEGRATION
• Increased Developer Productivity
• Helps avoid “Integration Hell”
• Automatically identifies exact failure point

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GETTING STARTED WITH
CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION
• Generally, the same solutions as for Build
Automation apply here
• Note: Sometimes “Frequent Integration” is
good enough

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HOW UNITY DOES IT
• We don’t…yet
• Frequent integration
• Nightly builds on mainlines
• On-demand builds on other branches

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AUTOMATED
TESTING:
RUN TESTS ON
THOSE
CONTINUOUSLY-
RUNNING BUILDS

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BENEFITS OF AUTOMATED
TESTING
• Provides protection against regressions
• Saves human resources
• Keeps test suites from bit-rotting

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GETTING STARTED WITH
AUTOMATED TESTING
• Find a test framework for your technology
• PyUnit (unittest), nose
• Sometimes creating your own frameworks
is an answer (i.e, High-Level Integration
Tests)

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HOW UNITY DOES IT
• No Python :-(
• Custom test frameworks in C#
• Heavy use of NUnit
• Custom test runner in Perl

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AUTOMATED
DEPLOYMENT:
EASILY DEPLOY
THOSE TESTED
BUILDS

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BENEFITS OF AUTOMATED
DEPLOYMENT
• Less error-prone than manual publishing
• Easy to verify
• Easy to track release history

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GETTING STARTED WITH
AUTOMATED DEPLOYMENT
• Often related to build automation/CI
solution
• Highly dependent on your organization’s
server infrastructure and type of software
• Start with a simple script and expand
• Consider integrating directly with your
already-existing build server solution

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HOW UNITY DOES IT
• Web-based publishing portal - “Saihai”
• Promoting builds to internal QA and
publishing to external testers.
• Publishing final releases to CDN
• Provides API regarding published releases
for other internal services

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COPYRIGHT 2015 @ UNITY
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The 5 pillars of Build Infrastructure.
ONE-CLICK
BUILDS
BUILD
AUTOMATION
CONTINUOUS
INTEGRATION
AUTOMATED
TESTING
AUTOMATED
DEPLOYMENT

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A CALL TO ARMS: TIPS FOR
GETTING STARTED
• Just do something
• When advocating for change, focus on the
benefits
• Don’t underestimate the value of having
dedicated build engineers on your team

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COME JOIN US!
• Release Managers
• Web Developers (Full-Stack & Front-End
Only)
• Low-level Build Engineers
• High-level Build Engineers
• Version Control Experts
• Packaging & Distribution Engineers
http://unity3d.com/jobs

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Thank You!
@natosha_bard