Continuos integration is a software development practice where members of a team integrate their work frecuently, at least one time per day.

Each integration is verified by an automated build to detect errors as quick as posible. Many teams finds that this approach leads to significantly reduced integration problems and allow a team to develop cohesive software rapidly.

Nowadays there are a lot of open source tool to work with continuos integration. For example,in our last project we used CI Travis.

Practices of continuos integration

• MSSR (Maintain a Single Source Repository), this mean that the complete project should be all in one repository.

• Automate the build, use the free tools to make your work faster and safer.

• Make your build self testing.

• When we are working with a team ,commiting everyday to de mainline of our projects tells the other developers about the changes. So Continous Integration allows teammembers to know changes quickly.

• Fix broken builds immediately.

• Test in a clone of the production enviroments.

• Automate deployments.

Conclutions

Continuos integration can reduce risks, make you find bugs easier and helps with the team comunication.

for more information of Continuos Integration I suggest to read Martin Fowler