Thoughts from Robert Collins on luck of continuous delivery in Free / Libre and Open Source Software projects (FLOSS). He outlines how continuous delivery could work for such a project.
The core of this article could be described as: Pick a service discovery mechanism (e.g. environment variables), write two small APIs – one for flag delivery, with streaming updates, and one for telemetry, with an optional aggressive data hiding proxy, then use those to feed enough data to drive a true CI/CD cycle back to upstream open source projects.
He also describes why you would want CD:
- Lower risk upgrades
- Faster delivery of new features
- Better code hygiene
He then presents his working model for CD which includes feature flags, telemetry etc. You will find charts explaining CD and learn about challenges faced by OpenStack project when talking about CD and distribution. Interesting read for anybody working on FLOSS and FOSS.
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