Jack Morgan, Intel
Clark Boylan, OpenStack
Gating code commits, approaches taken by two large-scale open source projects
An effective method for ensuring software quality is preventing defects from merging to the code base in the first place. The OpenStack and OPNFV projects perform pre-merge code gating on every change. In order to merge to their respective code bases, each commit must pass required testing.
This process allows these large open source projects to merge hundreds of commits each week while ensuring a high degree of code quality. Blatant bugs are caught outright, code reviewers are given as much information as possible on the functionality of the software in question, and when things do break you can look back through logs to determine when behavior changed.
This paper will discuss the methods and tools developed by OpenStack and OPNFV to make this approach to software testing practices. Readers should come away with the knowledge necessary to implement similar processes and tooling within their organizations to increase the quality of their code as well.