Nexus and Continuous Integration

The idea of continuous integration (CI) is that software development efforts are much easier to manage when test failures and other bugs can be identified closer to the time they were introduced into a complex system. As a consequence, the differences between the working and the failing system are smaller and therefore easier to detect.

The terms continuous integration was coined by Martin Fowler and Kent Beck in their book Extreme Programming Explained published in 1999. They introduced the idea of creating a system that continuously builds your software and executes any tests against it on a regular basis as well, all in response to any changes of the source code.

Since its introduction, the usage of continuous integration servers became an established and well-understood best practice across the entire software development industry.

A number of commercial, as well as open-source servers, are now available for installation in your own infrastructure as well as a managed service running remotely. Typical CI installations are often comprised of a number of servers running the actual build and being orchestrated by one master and build running on the CI servers range from simple compile builds to running large integration test suites or regression tests in an automated fashion. In addition, CI servers are increasingly used for continuous deployment, where a series of successful build and test run results in an actual production deployment of the software.

Nexus IQ Server can analyze the components used in your software development for security and license characteristics. When integrated with a continuous integration server it becomes a dynamic analysis performed on a regular basis occurring potentially with each build running on the server.

All of our CI tools allow you to perform complete security and license analysis of the artifacts produced by the configured build backed by your Nexus IQ Server.