Work practices and challenges in continuous integration: A survey with Travis CI users
Work practices and challenges in continuous integration: A survey with Travis CI users
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持续集成中的工作实践和挑战：对 Travis CI 用户的调查
DOI：
10.1002/spe.2637
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发表时间：
2018
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Marcel Rebouças
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
G. Pinto;F. C. Filho;R. Bonifácio;Marcel Rebouças
持续集成(CI)是一种在过去几年中越来越流行的软件开发实践。然而，我们仍然缺少关于软件开发人员如何从其基本概念、采用该实践的动机、构建中断的原因以及与CI相关的好处和问题的角度来看待CI的经验集合。为了阐明这一方向，我们对158名CI用户进行了一项用户调查。通过主要是定性的调查，我们得出了一系列并不总是显而易见的发现。例如，我们观察到(1)开发人员不确定工作失败是否代表失败；(2)测试不足是与构建破坏相关的最常见的技术原因，而缺乏时间对社会原因起到了作用；(3)尽管一些受访者报告CI系统增加了代码处于已知状态的信心，但一些受访者也报告说，盲目信任测试时存在一种错误的信任感。这项实证研究对于那些对更好地理解和促进开放源码或工业环境中的CI实践感兴趣的人尤其相关。
Continuous integration (CI) is a software development practice that has been gaining increasing popularity in the last few years. However, we still miss a collection of experiences regarding how software developers perceive the idea of CI, in terms of its fundamental concepts, the reasons that motivate the adoption of this practice, the reasons for build breakage, and the benefits and problems related to CI. To shed light on this direction, we conducted a user survey with 158 CI users. Through a mostly qualitative investigation, we produce a list of findings that are not always obvious. For instance, we observed that (1) developers are not sure whether a job failure represents a failure or not; (2) inadequate testing is the most common technical reason related to build breakage, whereas lack of time plays a role on the social reasons; and (3) although some respondents reported that CI systems increase the confidence that the code is in a known state, some respondents also reported that there is a false sense of confidence when blindly trusting tests. This empirical study is particularly relevant to those interested in better understanding and fostering CI practices either in an open‐source or industrial setting.