This document discusses the importance of continuous integration and automation for software builds. It recommends setting up tasks like syntax checking, unit testing, code analysis and other quality checks to run automatically on each code change. This helps catch errors early, improves code quality over time, and makes the build process easy and repeatable. The document provides examples of tools like PHPUnit, PHPLOC and Ant that can be used to configure an automated build process for PHP projects.

1. Build Process
The beginnings of
Continuous Integration

2. Who Am I?

CTO/Founder of Pamiris, Inc.

Extensive NPO board service

Overseen payroll conversions
& HRIS implementations with
over 600 employees

BBA, MIS from EWU 2004
(manga cum laude, BGS)

3. Build Process: wait... why?
But PHP doesn't have to compile!
definition - Build /bild/: The
process of preparing
software for deployment
and/or distribution.

4. PHP Deployment Prep
● Lint (syntax/compile error checking)
● SLOC (source lines of code) metrics
● Unit testing
● Code coverage analysis
● Functional Testing
● Code style checking
● Cyclomatic and N-path complexity
● Code duplication (DRY)

5. PHP Deployment Prep:
Again... why should we?
● Ability to track code quality trends
● More people/other teams can contribute
safely(er. Saflier. Saferly?)
● Accountability for all
● Nervous sleep deprivation, anyone?
● Sooner found = cheaper fixed

6. Quick Feedback
● Total coverage statistics
● Complexity measures
● CRAP index: Change Risk Anti- Patterns
● Pass/No Pass for tests

8. PHP Deployment Prep:
Why doesn't it happen?
● “Never enough time”
● “It worked fine on my machine”
● “It didn't seem like a big deal”
If it isn't easy and repeatable,
it won't happen.

9. Build Automation:
Make it easy, make it happen
Developers and QA folks alike should be able to
check a commit with absolute ease. The easier it
is, the more it happens. The more it happens,
the better the code is.

10. Build Automation Tools
● GNU Make
http://www.gnu.org/software/make/
● Phing (PHing Is Not Gnu make)
http://www.phing.info/
● Apache Ant
http://ant.apache.org/

11. Start Simple
● Get PHPUnit, behat, PHPspec or other unit
test running
● Get PHPLOC to run (composer makes it easy)
● Install a build automation tool
● MAGIC... ??? … profit.

12. Basic build.xml

13. My current build.xml
● ~175 Lines
● Tasks:
– Build (prepare, lint, phpunit-ci, phploc, pdepend,
phpmd)
– Build-parallel
– Phpcs (coding standard analysis)
– Selenium-install
– Selenium-start -stop

14. Ant usage: running the build
● Just 'ant' will autorun the whole build command
● 'ant <target-name>' will run any part of it
● Different targets for different uses
– Developers WIP: fast unit tests w/o coverage or
functional
– Developers pre-commit: all tests plus coverage
– Metric tracking: all static analysis tools
– Pre-deploy: all of the above

18. Next Steps
● Flesh out other valuable build steps
● Store build results
● Automate build on check-in with
Jenkins/TravisCI
● Add charting (trend display)
● Continuous deployment

19. Resources
● http://jenkins-php.org/index.html
● Integrating PHP Projects with Jenkins by
Sebastian Bergman (on Kindle, etc)
● http://marcelog.github.io/articles/ci_jenkins_hudson
● https://www.phptesting.org/