Suggest: add CI + volunteer

Development
#1

Dear QuPath devs,

I just discovered QuPath, think it is awesome (FOSS!) and would like to use it. One of the things I enjoy seeing on projects I like (and may contribute to), is some form of continuous integration, such as Coveralls, Travis CI, Jenkings, etc and a nice juicy build badge. I think such a build badge would look great on the GitHub repo site!

If there is already some CI I overlooked, sorry for the noise. Else, I hope you’ll add it one day. Such a badge of status always looks good :rainbow:

I would volunteer to try to add a Travis CI setup file, as I do have quite some experience with it. But I do not mind if you’d prefer to do so yourselves :+1:

Cheers, Richel Bilderbeek

1 Like
#2

Thanks @richelbilderbeek!

CI is something I occasionally think about, but without much knowledge. I’d be interested to understand better what would be the benefits (and costs?) for the project.

Although QuPath has been open source for a few years now, the circumstances of its early years were… suboptimally challenging. As @melvingelbard and I work to get it back on track, we are rather swamped by plans and projects – so keen to prioritise wisely :slight_smile:

It’s not really clear to me what benefits CI would bring us right now, and therefore before your message I was thinking it’s a topic to revisit in the future – but very interested in your views on it!

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#3

Hi @petebankhead,

Thanks for your kind reply! And I see you concern (and that was why I volunteered as well). For me, CI is an absolute time-saver, and I will give some problems it solves:

  • Users posting question that the program cannot be installed on their OS: one can do a daily build (by cron job) on most platforms to filter out where the problem is
  • Contributors posting a Pull Request (that have to be checked by hand): with a CI, the CI checks if a Pull Request will keep the build working
  • Verifying bug reports: with CI, a contributor can add a test to the test suite and one can verify that indeed the test fails
  • Not being able to show off with your awesome work: a CI build status is a badge of quality to other devs (like me) :sunglasses:

As I have plenty of knowledge and experience, I do volunteer to add Travis CI to QuPath. I am unsure if I will get it to work, but I would be keen to try. And I would agree if the CI would removed any day :+1:

I hope that answers your questions! If you’d decide to focus on other things, sure, I’d understand :+1: