Is continuous integration worth it for small projects?

Question

I've been pushing for continuous integration at my company since I joined 5 months ago, but having seen the type of applications we work on I'm starting to think that it might not be worth the effort of setting up each and every project for continuous integration.

If you work in a development department where the average project takes 2-3 weeks and once it's deployed you seldom if ever have to worry about it, is continuous integration worth the hassle of setting it up?

Answer 1

Probably depends on your process. If you have unit tests that cover your code, then continuous integration is worth every bit. I'm assuming that you guys all work on a single module of work as the projects are 2-3 weeks.

I don't think folks will run every test for every one of their commits and continuous integration helps a lot here.

The other reason would be if your project is highly modularized. I've worked in systems where there are lots of modules and a developer wouldn't be functional-testing the entire website before committing. Things might not even compile properly as the other module wouldn't even build because the developer did not checkout the complete code.

I'd recommend continuous integration anyway. With setups like Hudson and Cruisecontrol, it doesn't take a lot of time to set up and pays for itself quickly.

Answer 2

Personally, I think CI and the various processes it encourages are always useful. Getting CI setup is rather trivial once you have the server set up itself. You're basically just copying a configuration file from one project, editing it, and creating a new project. I wouldn't not use CI because of the "effort of setting up each and every project".