IEEE Software: Best Practices - July 1996 - Daily Build

IEEE Software: Best Practices - July 1996: "It minimizes integration risk. One of the greatest risks that a team project faces is that, when the different team members combine or 'integrate' the code they have been working on separately, the resulting composite code does not work well. Depending on how late in the project the incompatibility is discovered, debugging might take longer than it would have if integration had occurred earlier, program interfaces might have to be changed, or major parts of the system might have to be redesigned and reimplemented. In extreme cases, integration errors have caused projects to be cancelled. The daily build and smoke test process keeps integration errors small and manageable, and it prevents runaway integration problems.

It reduces the risk of low quality. Related to the risk of unsuccessful or problematic integration is the risk of low quality. By minimally smoke-testing all the code daily, quality problems are prevented from taking control of the project. You bring the system to a known, good state, and then you keep it there. You simply don't allow it to deteriorate to the point where time-consuming quality problems can occur.

It supports easier defect diagnosis. When the product is built and tested every day, it's easy to pinpoint why the product is broken on any given day. If the product worked on Day 17 and is broken on Day 18, something that happened between the two builds broke the product.

It improves morale. Seeing a product work provides an incredible boost to morale. It almost doesn't matter what the product does. Developers can be excited just to see it display a rectangle! With daily builds, a bit more of the product works every day, and that keeps morale high."