CI/CD practices with the TANGO-controls framework in the context of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope project

摘要

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is an international effort to build two radio interferometers in South Africa and Australia to form one Observatory monitored and controlled from the global headquarters (GHQ) based in the United Kingdom at Jodrell Bank. The project is now approaching the end of its design phase and gearing up for the beginning of formal construction. The period between the end of the design phase and the start of the construction phase has been called bridging and, one of its main goals is to promote some CI/CD practices among the software development teams. CI/CD is an acronym that stands for continuous integration and continuous delivery and/or continuous deployment. Continuous integration (CI) is the practice of merging all developers local (working) copies into the mainline on a frequent basis (many times per day). Continuous delivery is the approach of developing software in short cycles ensuring that it can be released anytime and continuous deployment is the approach of delivering the software into operational use frequently and automatically. The present paper analyses the decisions taken by the Systems Team (a specialized agile team devoted to developing and maintaining the tools that allow continuous practises) together with SKA architects to promote the CI/CD practices with the TANGO controls framework.