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WHAT IS CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION?

Continuous Integration (CI) is a development practice where developers integrate code into a shared repository frequently, ideally several times daily. Each integration will be verified by automated builds and tests.

The benefit of this infrastructure is that by integrating regularly, errors can be detected and located easily. Each change tends to be small, so pinpointing specific changes can be done quickly.

Continuous Integration Build

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

The ASWF’s investment in CI build infrastructure will provide the industry’s open source software community with the solid foundation needed to improve best practices and address the unique challenges we face, including:

  • Support for Mac and Windows server and desktop builds in addition to Linux
  • Managing multiple versions builds, plus requirements for dependencies
  • Consultative assistance transitioning to a community CI platform
  • Transparency, flexibility and openness of reference build configurations including build flags, scripts, recipes, etc.
  • Security and versioning control as the studios shift towards cloud deployment.

BENEFITS

The benefits to the community of having a CI build infrastructure include:

  • Sharing open source build configurations, scripts, and recipes enables reference builds and alignment between user and vendor configurations
  • Reduces duplicated effort in creating build and runtime environments to run open source software, extending VFX reference platform adoption with benefits to open build configurations and reference builds
  • Facilitates community development by exposing the tools necessary to build, run and test OSS
  • A forum for sharing outside an organization’s firewall enables easier upstreaming of fixes that may exist within one organization today
  • Reference builds are produced outside one organization’s firewall and the organization is not in the distribution path
  • Lower the barrier to entry for using additional software components and software development
  • Increased adoption of the VFX Reference Platform
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