buildingoften

Buildingoften is a software development practice that emphasizes producing builds frequently, ideally on each code change or small set of changes, rather than after long intervals. The practice aims to provide rapid feedback on integration, compilation, and test results, reducing the risk of large, unreproducible failures late in the development cycle.

It is aligned with and often described as a form of continuous integration (CI) and Agile software development. By continuously integrating changes into a shared mainline and validating them through automated builds and tests, teams can detect defects early, improve code quality, and shorten release cycles.

Typical implementation involves automated build pipelines that trigger on commits or pull requests, run in isolated environments, and produce versioned artifacts. Builds commonly include compilation, unit tests, integration tests, and static analysis, with failures blocking merges until resolved. Teams may also run nightly or weekly builds for broader validation.

Benefits include faster feedback, reduced integration problems, and better collaboration. Drawbacks can include higher resource usage, maintenance overhead, and the risk of flaky tests that obscure real failures if not managed properly.

Effective adoption requires clear goals, stable dependency management, fast and reliable tests, and reliable infrastructure. Practices such as caching, parallel test execution, containerization, and incremental builds help keep feedback times short. Metrics commonly tracked include build success rate, time to completion, and mean time to recover from a failed build. Tools used range from Jenkins and GitHub Actions to GitLab CI, CircleCI, and Azure DevOps.