by aa-jv | 2025-08-20 08:43:05+00:00
I have built many CI/build-servers over the decades for various projects, and after using pretty much everything else out there, I've simply reverted, time and again - and, very productively - to using Plain Old Bash Scripts.

(Of course, this is only possible because I can build software in a bash shell. Basically: if you're using bash already, you don't need a foreign CI service - you just need to replace yourself with a bash script.)

I've got one for updating repo's and dealing with issues, I've got one for setting up resources and assets required prior to builds, I've got one for doing the build - then another one for packaging, another for signing and notarization, and finally one more for delivering the signed, packaged, built software to the right places for testing purposes, as well as running automated tests, reporting issues, logging the results, and informing the right folks through the PM system.

And this all integrates with our project management software (some projects use Jira, some use Redmine), since CLI interfaces to the PM systems are easily attainable and set up. If a dev wants to ignore one stage in the build pipeline, they can - all of this can be wrapped up very nicely into a Makefile/CMakeLists.txt rig, or even just a 'build-dev.sh vs. build-prod.sh' mentality.

And the build server will always run the build/integration workflow according to the modules, and we can always be sure we'll have the latest and greatest builds available to us whenever a dev goes on vacation or whatever.

And all this with cross-platform, multiple-architecture targets - the same bash scripts, incidentally, run on Linux, MacOS and Windows, and all produce the same artefacts for the relevant platform: MacOS=.pkg, Windows=.exe, Linux=.deb(.tar)

Its a truly wonderful thing to onboard a developer, and they don't need a Jenkins login or to set up Github accounts to monitor actions, and so on. They just use the same build scripts, which are a key part of the repo already, and then they can just push to the repo when they're ready and let the build servers spit out the product on a network share for distribution within the group.

This works with both Debug and Release configs, and each dev can have their own configuration (by modifying the bash scripts, or rather the env.sh module..) and build target settings - even if they use an IDE for their front-end to development. (Edit: /bin/hostname is your friend, devs. Use it to identify yourself properly!)

Of course, this all lives on well-maintained and secure hardware - not the cloud, although theoretically it could be moved to the cloud, there's just no need for it.

I'm convinced that the CI industry is mostly snake-oil being sold to technically incompetent managers. Of course, I feel that way about a lot of software services these days - but really, to do CI properly you have to have some tooling and methodology that just doesn't seem to be being taught any more, these days. Proper tooling seems to have been replaced with the ideal of 'just pay someone else to solve the problem and leave management alone'.

But, with adequate methods, you can probably build your own CI system and be very productive with it, without much fuss - and I say this with a view on a wide vista of different stacks in mind. The key thing is to force yourself to have a 'developer workstation + build server' mentality from the very beginning - and NEVER let yourself ship software from your dev machine.

(EDIT: call me a grey-beard, but get off my lawn: if you're shipping your code off to someone else [github actions, grrr...] to build artefacts for your end users, you probably haven't read Ken Thompsons' "Reflections On Trusting Trust" deeply or seriously enough. Pin it to your forehead until you do!)