As of December 1st, the Microsoft Store in Redmond will for the first time start carrying books from publishers other than Microsoft Press. My book, Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk, is one of those books. For the time being, the book will only be available at the physical store, not at the online Microsoft store.

One of my goals from the beginning in writing the book was to provide examples in many different languages/platforms. In the book, we cover C#/NAnt examples, .NET static analysis tools along with Java and Ruby examples. There’s something for everyone. CI, as a practice, is independent of any particular tool. That said, tools greatly support the practice, given the vast array of code inspection, build, and CI servers on the market. So, if you’re a Microsoftie and are curious about CI or are currently using the daily build practice, purchase a copy, or three, for yourself at the Redmond store.

In case you can’t get enough of CI from the book, check out “Spot defects early with Continuous Integration” at IBM developerWorks.

This tutorial guides you step-by-step through the fundamental concepts of Continuous Integration using Hudson, Ant, and Subversion– when you’re done, you’ll understand the benefits of Continuous Integration as well as how to set up and properly configure Hudson, Ant, and Subversion to work together. The resulting build process will run both tests and software inspections and will report back violations almost as quickly as they occur.

Agitar’s Jeffrey Fredrick and myself will be hosting a free webinar on how to implement a continuous integration and testing process. Jeffrey is a key factor in the success of CruiseControl and is one of the principle figures behind CITCON (the other, of course, being Paul Julius); consequently, I’m humbled to have this opportunity. If you’re curious about CI or developer testing, then make it a point to join us for this event.

The webinar will take place on November 14th at 9am PST and registration is required. See you there!

I am very pleased that renowned Continuous Integration and Developer Testing expert, Paul Julius, has joined Stelligent Incorporated (my employer). Paul and Jay Flowers are recent additions to our impressive team of experts.

Paul is a co-founder of the CruiseControl Continuous Integration server and has a passion for improving the state of the software industry. Paul is also a co-founder of the wildly popular CITCON conferences hosted on three continents every year. Along with Martin Fowler, he wrote one of the forewords of the Continuous Integration book that I coauthored. I look forward to working with Paul as he joins Stelligent. He blogs at www.pauljulius.com/blog/ and will soon be blogging at our popular company blog, TestEarly.com.

Stelligent is the leader in Agile Software Production. We work with large Fortune 500 and government organizations around the world. We help development teams employ techniques such as build automation, continuous integration, release engineering, automated developer testing and inspections into the daily process of developing software rather than waiting later in the lifecycle. Our goal is always to accelerate the delivery of highly reliable software for our customers.

My employer, Stelligent, is hosting a roundtable discussion on TDD at our offices in Reston, Virginia called “TDD horror stories” on Tuesday, October 30th.

TDD, or Test-Driven Development, is a great companion topic to Continuous Integration as your integration is rarely useful without running a suite a automated developer tests.

It’s another wine (brought to you by Savoy-Lee wineries) and cheese party. Stelligent is also raffling off a an iPod shuffle

From TestEarly:

I often run into teams who attempted to jump skull first into TDD and eventually threw their bones up in frustration when either schedules became scary or they ran into scenarios too frightening to test. Are there areas where test-driven development gives you the spooks?

As you can see, it’ll be fun!

When: Tuesday, October 30th from 5:30 PM to 7 PM

Where: Stelligent?s haunted headquarters (map)

Who: Developers, Technical Leads, Architects, Project Managers, Testers…Anyone involved in software development

You must RSVP.