LightSys: Lightweight and Efficient CI System for Improving Integration Speed of Software

TL;DR

LightSys is a lightweight, modular continuous integration system that significantly accelerates code review and integration processes, reducing overheads and resource usage for large software projects.

Contribution

It introduces a portable, efficient CI system that operates on standard desktops, drastically improving integration speed and resource efficiency over traditional methods.

Findings

Execution time 6x faster

CPU usage 40% lower

Memory consumption 1/180

Abstract

The complexity and size increase of software has extended the delay for developers as they wait for code analysis and code merge. With the larger and more complex software, more developers nowadays are developing software with large source code repositories. The tendency for software platforms to immediately update software packages with feature updates and bug-fixes is a significant obstacle. Continuous integration systems may help prevent software flaws during the active development of software packages, even when they are deployed and updated frequently. Herein, we present a portable and modular code review automation system that inspects incoming code changes such as code format and style, performance regression, static analysis, build and deployment tests, and dynamic analysis before merging and changing code. The proposed mechanisms are sufficiently lightweight to be hosted on a regular desktop computer even for numerous developers. The resulting reduced costs allow developers to apply the proposed mechanism to many source code repositories. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed mechanism drastically reduces overheads and improves usability compared with conventional mechanisms: execution time (6x faster), CPU usage (40% lower), memory consumption (1/180), and no out-of-memory occurrence.