RuboCop

The continuous integration process for our Rails backend app starts by opening a GitHub pull request. This triggers a CircleCI build and some Code Climate checks.

The CircleCI build is a workflow that runs the following jobs:

• check for security vulnerabilities with Brakeman
• check code quality with RuboCop
• run RSpec tests in parallel with the knapsack gem, and output test coverage reports with the simplecov gem
• upload test coverage to Code Climate

Code Climate checks the following:

• code quality metrics like code complexity
• test coverage minimum thresholds

The CircleCI jobs and Code Climate checks above have corresponding GitHub status checks.

Once all the mandatory GitHub checks pass and the code+functionality have been reviewed, developers can merge their pull request into our Git master branch. Code is then ready to deploy!

#ContinuousIntegration

For many(if not all) small and medium size business time and cost matter a lot.

That's why languages, frameworks, tools, and services that are easy to use and provide 0 to productive in less time, it's best.

Maybe Node.js frameworks might provide better features compared to Rails but in terms of MVPs, for us Rails is the leading alternative.

Amazon EC2 might be cheaper and more customizable than Heroku but in the initial terms of a project, you need to complete configurationos and deploy early.

Advanced configurations can be done down the road, when the project is running and making money, not before.

But moving fast isn't the only thing we care about. We also take the job to leave a good codebase from the beginning and because of that we try to follow, as much as we can, style guides in Ruby with RuboCop and in JavaScript with ESLint and StandardJS.

Finally, comunication and keeping a good history of conversations, decisions, and discussions is important so we use a mix of Slack and Twist