====== MantisBT Build Process proposal ======

This page is only a draft, pending discussion on the development mailing list.

===== Scope =====

This document proposes a number of improvements to the MantisBT build process, by introducing a structured build process used to validate code changes as they happen and to produce nightly builds.

Goals:

  * Increased visibility of the build results and of their consumability
  * Increased feedback speed regarding corectness of changes
  * Larger testing coverage of the MantisBT codebase

Non-goals:

  * Continuous deployment of the resulting artifacts
  * Generating release artifacts , replacing the current release process

===== Build process =====

The current MantisBT testing infrastructure supports two kinds of tests:

  * Self-contained unit tests
  * Integration tests for the SOAP API

These tests could be arranged in the following succession

  - Unit tests
  - Integration tests SOAP matrix build
    - Integration tests running against MySQL Community 5.1.x
    - Integration tests running PostgreSQL 9.0.x

==== Database backend extensibility ====

This build will allows us to easily scale in the medium term by adding more databases from those in our supported or experimental phase:

  - DB2 Express 9.7.x
  - Oracle XE 10g 
  - SQL Server Express ( problematic, probably requires Windows license )

==== Adding new kinds of integration tests ====

As we progress, we will be able to new kinds of matrix builds, for instance:

  - file API builds against multiple backends ( database, file, ftp ) 
  - authentication API builds against different authentication schems ( Mantis internal, LDAP )

Another possibility is to add Selenium-driven tests to our build, to validate that the pages work as expected .

===== Publishing results =====

The results will be published as checksummed archives, which have a validated quality - they pass ( or not ) the tests as currently defined. This is key information for both developers and early consumers of the build and encourages rapid feedback on versions still in development.