Support:Sumodev/Continuous Deployment

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By the end of 2011, Support Engineering wants to move from big releases to Continuous Deployment. There's lots to do to reach that goal.

Measurable Goals

• A bugfix reaches production within 30 minutes of being checked in.

Q1 2011

• [DONE] Get JavaScript tests running. [1]
  • [MISSED] XUnit results from JS test suite.
• [DONE] Stop using SVN. [2]
• [DONE] Crontab in Git. [3]
  • Now we just need to start using it.
• [MISSED] Script deployment.

Q2 2011

• [DONE] Get release cycle down to one week.
• [DONE] Replace branches with flags.
• [DONE] XUnit results from Qunit

Q3 2011

• Update dev server from CI.
• Break Selenium into deploy-blocking and environmental.
• Run deploy-blocking Selenium after check-in/dev update.
• Run QUnit on all major browsers.
• Deploy with Chief (big red button!).

Q4 2011

Action Items

Testing

• [ON TRACK] Expand unit test suite to cover front end and JavaScript.
• Organize test suite into unit/functional/acceptance/etc.
• Work with Web QA Automation to maximize automated coverage and combine results.
• Automated performance tests.
  • Aggregation and graphs.

Infrastructure

• Define a secure, defensive, robust flow from source control to production.
  • If someone steals James' laptop, breaks in, and commits an infinite loop, that change should not reach production.
• Automate/one-button push process.

Release Planning

There is a qualitative difference between deciding which work to group into a release and when to fix small bugs when changes go live immediately. Our concept of planning will have to change.

1. [DONE] Push every week. (By end of Q2.)
2. Push every day.
3. Push several times per day.

Features

• [DONE] Support feature flags.
• [DONE] Support features per group or percentage.