Source URL: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/accelerating-ci-with-aws-codebuild-parallel-test-execution-now-available/
Source: AWS News Blog
Title: Accelerating CI with AWS CodeBuild: Parallel test execution now available
Feedly Summary: Speed up build times on CodeBuild with test splitting across multiple parallel build environments. Read how test splitting with CodeBuild works and how to get started.
AI Summary and Description: Yes
Summary: The text discusses the new feature of AWS CodeBuild that enables parallel test execution, dramatically reducing test suite run times and enhancing continuous integration processes. This capability not only streamlines testing but also increases developer productivity and resource efficiency.
Detailed Description:
The announcement brings an important enhancement to AWS CodeBuild’s functionality by introducing parallel test execution. This new feature empowers developers to run their test suites concurrently, which is crucial for maintaining efficiency and productivity in modern software development environments.
Key Points:
– **Parallel Test Execution**: This feature allows developers to run tests simultaneously across multiple compute environments, significantly cutting down on the total build test time. For example, in a demo, test execution time was reduced from 35 minutes to just six minutes.
– **Impact on Continuous Integration (CI)**: Long test execution times can hinder CI processes, affecting delivery speed for new features and increasing wait times for developers. By implementing parallel execution, teams can mitigate these challenges and enhance productivity.
– **Test Sharding and Strategy**: The tests are organized using a sharding approach, where each build node executes a subset of the test suite independently. CodeBuild provides environment variables to manage node identification and test distribution.
– **Multiple Sharding Strategies**:
– **Equal-Distribution**: Distributes test files alphabetically across nodes.
– **Stability**: Utilizes a consistent hashing algorithm to maintain test assignments across future tests.
– **Automatic Test Report Merging**: CodeBuild simplifies test results by merging reports from parallel runs into a single summary, which includes comprehensive details about test outcomes.
– **Configuration Options**: Developers can easily enable and configure parallel test execution by making adjustments in their `buildspec.yml` file, enabling batch builds, setting parallelism levels, and utilizing the `codebuild-tests-run` utility.
– **Compatibility Across Environments**: This feature works with various testing frameworks, making it versatile for a wide range of programming languages and development scenarios.
– **Cost Efficiency**: The new capability does not incur additional costs beyond standard CodeBuild pricing for computing resources.
– **Broader Availability**: The feature is available in all AWS regions where CodeBuild is offered, set for use with various compute modes, further encouraging adoption.
In conclusion, the parallel test execution feature in AWS CodeBuild significantly accelerates testing processes, thereby improving the software development life cycle and fostering a more productive environment for developers. Its implications for security and compliance include better resource management and efficiency, which are critical for maintaining robust development practices in cloud-based architectures.