Overview of Continuous Integration

Continuous integration, otherwise known as CI, has been around for quite some time. Its origins can be traced back to Kent Beck, Martin Fowler, and their work at the Chrysler corporation in the mid-nineties. The basic idea was that organizations could save a significant amount of time and effort by performing small yet frequent code merges into a central mainline within source control instead of a large risky merge just prior to release.

This way of thinking requires a team to discipline itself fairly well and requires that each team member commit their code frequently. It discourages isolated feature development efforts for long periods of time and encourages a higher level of collaboration and communication. The result of such an implementation is a much higher quality release due to less complex merge conflicts and code integration issues.

The idea of continuous integration has been a trending topic for years. This is because of the higher level of communication...