Should developers work in sandboxes?

Question

If developers perform unit testing in their development environment before checking in to source control should that environment (including test failures) be shared?

Should all builds be public?

Answer 1

I think it´s impractical to make developer builds public. You do not want to bother your team members with every build failure (unit test failure) you encounter.

You are always in the process of creating a solution for some problem and chances are you won't get it right the first time so unit test failures will happen often. Especially if you take a test-driven approach to developing your code: writing your unit test first and implement functionality so it will not fail anymore.

Answer 2

I think working in a sandbox is a good idea. It has saved me a few times. I usually have a few different virtual machines floating around that I use for development and if I mess it up real bad I don't have to wait for my machine to be rebuilt.

I don't think all test results from simple developer builds should be made public. I'm not really worried about hurting someone's feelings by having all their failures public necessarily but I worry that the information they provide isn't useful.

It would be interesting to investigate some type of system whereby the developer is required to submit passing test results when they checkin but I think even that would be pushing things. It may have the detrimental effect of hurting productivity. Developers have enough non-coding stuff to do already.