1 The Course

Students will explore the process of automating the integration of changes into a code base, the testing of that code on varied platforms, and the delivery and deployment of the code products.

1.1 This is About Late-Stage Software Engineering

We can divide the activities that make up the lifetime of a software project into:

• Development: What happens to prepare the software and get it working.
• Operations: What happens after the supposedly working code is released.

1.1.1 Trends in Development are Stressing Ops

• Incremental development, particularly Agile
  • Time between releases has shrunk from a couple of releases per year to a release every 2-4 weeks.
  • That doesn’t allow much time for system testing and deployment
• Micro-Service architectures
• Popular for web-based systems
• Multiplies the number of distinct systems entering operations
• Increases inter-system interactions that require system testing

1.2 Key Concepts

Key concepts to be explored will be:

• Continuous integration and continuous deployment
• Build pipelines
• Automated system testing
• The use of virtual machines and containers as testbeds.
• Conducting testing in the cloud (AWS).
• Deploying products to the cloud.

1.3 Demonstration Projects

Part of this course will be hands-on

• Students will demonstrate the techniques learned on a body of software.

• Emphasis is on demonstrating a process, not on writing code for the project.

1.4 Expect to use:

• Virtual machines
• Docker
• Cloud-based servers
  • All students will be provided AWS accounts

1.5 This is Not a Finished Course

This is intended as a prototype for a future course to be offered at the 400/500 level.

• As the semester progresses, students will help build that future course.
• Our own starting point will depend on where the students are
  • Based on results of a survey in week 1, I will decide how much CS350 material needs to be reviewed before we can start learning about operations.

2 What You Will Be Doing

2.1 Lesson Plans

Each student will be expected to prepare a lesson plan on a topic selected in conjunction with the instructor. This lesson plan will consist of

• An introductory document.
• A list of possible readings.
• A step-by-step lab/assignment to introduce use of the relevant technology.
• A presentation by the student to the class walking through the introductory document.

All students will be expected to read all lesson plans.

* Critiquing the introductory document and choice of readings.
* Attempting the lab/assignment, while keeping a log of steps performed and difficulties encountered.

2.3 Examples of Possible Topics

• Controlling Virtual Machines Programmatically
• CI/CD Deployment to Docker Containers
• System Testing of Web Applications
• System Testing of GUI Applications
• Kubernetes
• The Default CI Pipeline for Gitlab
  • or GitHub
• AWS CLI (serverless) Access
• System testing on AWS
• CI/CD in Windows Environments on AWS
• MacOS Cloud Services
• Alternative CI Services (e.g., Travis)

2.4 Demonstration Project

Each student must maintain, through the semester, a demonstration project involving a non-trivial amount of code, preferably code that includes some system dependencies.

• Students will prepare a report to be submitted at the end of the semester detailing the initial state of this project and the course-relevant technologies that have been added to the project.

• Actual progress in developing the project functionality is not relevant to this course and will not be part of the grading.

• Ideally, students in this course will already be members of a research group in the CS Dept or other open-source effort for which they are developing software that they can use as a testbed for the ideas explored in this course.

• A project will be provided for students who cannot supply their own.