Once you have an automated build, the next step is to automate deployment1. A lot of people take this to mean that you should be able to check out the code, compile it and deploy it all from your local work station. I think this is largely a really bad idea. Firstly, if you have deployment system that needs to vary, or might in the future need to vary, based on the version of the product, then your deployment scripts have to be in source control with the product and be branched and versioned just like the actual source code.

Having a fast build is an important part of XP so that the continuous integration cycle doesn’t take too long. Do people usually see this as including all the acceptance tests as well or does this just include the developer’s tests? How do people handle acceptance tests failing? Does it cause the build to fail or not? What about acceptance tests that have been added for the current iteration but haven’t been implemented yet?

There’s a lot of talk about how you convert a legacy project over to TDD, and there’s a lot of talk about how you TDD on little code examples, but how do you get started on a real project? For a swing app, how do you TDD public static void main(String[] args)? Atomic testing wants you to be able to mock out your dependencies, which leads to things like dependency injection.

In James Shore’s chapter on Continuous Integration for his upcoming book, he strongly recommends using synchronous integration, where each time you check in you stop and wait for two builds to complete before moving on, in favor of asynchronous integration, where you check in and move on to your next task leaving an automated build server to check everything’s still okay. The whole point of continuous integration is that your team integrates regularly, so that you avoid conflicts.

Recently there was a security flaw introduced by a security patch for IE, this obviously is a really bad thing and something the IE team1 have received a lot of criticism about for some time. Obviously, the IE team took it seriously and tried to find ways to make sure it didn’t happen again. One thing that really bothered me though was a statement in the IEBlog: In parallel with making the right fix, we have been working through how we prevent similar mistakes from happening again.

I’m glad Andy side-tracked into talking about us temporarily dropping pair programming – I’ve been considering the same kind of things but want to see what the rest of the team thinks about it before I say too much. Slightly off topic, the development speed we’re achieving now is making me wonder if the tradeoffs when developing purely under Pair Programming are actually worth it. There’s a lot more that has changed recently that has led to our sudden improvement in velocity – not just pair programming.

As part of the process to open source Java, Sun have switched from using codenames for Java releases to just using the actual name. Thank goodness for that. I’m not sure I know of anything more frustrating than attempting to have a conversation with someone using code names instead of actual versions. Was Dolphin before or after Mustang? Which Tiger do you mean, Mac OS Tiger, Java Tiger or Tiger Direct?

Sam Ruby – Time for a new HTML Validator?: If people feel that HTML 5 deserves a better validator, I’m willing to invest some time into coding. Are there others interesting in contributing to the coding, the writing up of test cases, or the authoring of documentation? Is there a reason we need a new validator instead of just improving the existing one? The source code is available in CVS and there’s some brief instructions on how to contribute.

Okay, so I’ve converted my WordPress install to use Atom 1.0 and (I think) made using it as the default1, but I’ve got one warning left that I just don’t get: line 8, column 86: Same-document reference: http://www.symphonious.net/2006/08/13/those-who-still-need-classic/ [help] ... /08/13/those-who-still-need-classic/" /> Now I get that the two URLs are pointing to the same place, but why exactly is this a problem and what URL am I supposed to put in there?

Chris Adamson talks about the disappearance of classic support now that Apple has switched to Intel. It’s true, pretty much everyone has moved on from using classic apps, but there was one place I knew I could turn to find people still waiting for their favorite app to be updated: the HyperCard mailing list. Even there though the number of questions about intel are pretty light on as nearly everyone has moved on to HyperCard alternatives or just moved on to something else altogether.

The XP process allows so much flexibility in getting things done but this comes at the cost of focus. I’ve previously talked about how product managers have to be careful they don’t abuse the flexibility in XP, but recently Ephox has discovered the huge benefit that being focussed can be, even when you’re doing XP. We’ve come up against a very tight, very important deadline for a really big, really difficult new feature and at the same time we lost our entire support department so all support fell into the engineer’s laps.

I found it rather amusing that while filling out my census online it asked me: Question 59: Can the internet be accessed at this dwelling? To be fair, the options provided to answer included a description of what type of connection you had so the question couldn’t just be assumed, but it’s funny none the less.