Re: [tlug] TLUG Site with Hakyll Update

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull.stephen.fw@example.com>]

Curt Sampson writes:

 > Ya, it really helps everyone. A good way way to get started on it is
 > just to think to yourself, every time you're about to add a line to
 > the README, is, "could I make this documentation executable?" and see
 > if you can add a line to the top-level "test/build/run/setup/whatever"
 > script instead.

This is a GOOD idea, and one that (in my experience, YMMV) grows on
you pretty quickly because it helps you, too.

That said, experience with Python setup.py scripts suggests
diminishing returns set in quickly once you start breaking out pieces
of infrastructure into separate modules.  It becomes like learning a
new language for everyone else (and relearning for you if you have to
come back to it after a few months).

Really, I should stop here, but I can't resist commenting on this:

 > but actually the whole idea of CI started long before that
 > (starting to come to broader attention in the late 90s, with
 > Extreme Programming, I think)

I can't speak to the "broader attention" aspect, but Lucid (of Emacs
and Energize fame, or "historical interest" to the youngsters :-) was
doing this in the late 80s, and the Lisp machine folks were doing it
even earlier.  I'm pretty sure Microsoft "nightly builds" go back to
the same era (at least the early 90s).  And of course the desire for
access to those builds is more or less the driving impetus for the
free software movement.

On the other hand, if you mean more than just the syntax checks that
linkers do, really I would put it much later with the "devops"
movement, when people started putting nightly builds into
production and claiming they passed QA. ;-)

Steve