It’s not a build break until you have people baying for your blood in the morning.

Suresh Parameshwar
April 3, 2007
[From a technical perspective a “build break” occurs when computer source code will not compile (the automated process of converting human readable code into machine code). In almost every medium or larger sized project people check-in their code to a common computer which does the compile once per day/week/whatever. The resultant code is then installed on test machines and the testers go to work on it to see if they can find bugs. The developers also “sync up” with the common computer to get everyone else’s changes to use in their development for the next day. If the build breaks nearly all the testers and many of the developers are idle until the build is fixed. Hence, it’s a big deal if the build is broken.

I had checked in some code in the middle of the afternoon with a stupid mistake that broke things. Mike noticed it something like 40 minutes later and I fixed it within a few minutes–long before the morning build. Suresh was reassuring me it wasn’t a big deal, even though I was quite embarrassed.

Today Suresh was slightly embarrassed when I during a code review I pointed out one of his mistakes. But we’re not going to talk about that here.–Joe]