Ask Slashdot: Should Developers Install Their Software Themselves? 288
Paul Carver writes "Should developers be responsible for installing the software they develop into production environments? What about System Test environments? I'm not a developer and I'm not all that familiar with Agile or DevOps, but it seems unhealthy to me to have software installs done by developers. I think that properly developed software should come complete with installation instructions that can be followed by someone other than the person who wrote the code. I'd like to hear opinions from developers. Do you prefer a workplace where you hand off packaged software to other teams to deploy or do you prefer to personally install your software into System Test and then personally install it into production once the System Testers have certified it? For context, I'm talking about enterprise grade, Internet facing web services sold to end users as well as large companies on either credit card billing or contractual basis with service level agreements and 24x7 Operations support. I'm not talking about little one (wo)man shops and free or Google style years long beta services."
Why not use tools that help do it? (Score:2, Informative)
Developers should use those and make sure users can install their software themselves.
Re:Why not use tools that help do it? (Score:5, Informative)
::Applause::
Sorry, I just do not have the mod points at the moment.
The exactly, correct response.
As a developer, there is only so much I can do. And I really do not want calls in the middle of the night. If I can describe how to install my software to a production support team, then the software release isn't ready for production.
Re:Why not use tools that help do it? (Score:5, Informative)
I completely disagree. Developers should absolutely be involved with software installs. Rarely should they have the final say, but both operations and development staff benefit from working together on software installs.
The best example I can give for this is database installs. Working with the operations staff on installs helps developers better understand engine performance. They learn about things like prepared queries, connection pools, what tables remain paged into memory, etc. These are things that help the developers write better code. Similarly, the operations staff can learn what the application focuses are. They can optimize performance through VM provisioning, tablespace layout, memory pool size, etc. They can also understand the usage goals better, which lets them keep developers informed of important changes.
I've been running IT departments for over 10 years, and my experience has shown me that there is a definite benefit to having development and ops work together on installs.
Re:Why not use tools that help do it? (Score:2, Informative)
It sounds like you're putting the blame/responsibility on the developer for determining what versions of what underlying software is installed. Isn't that what the dev & prod build guys are for?
The developer should be developing. Not testing. That's QA/production.
Re:Why not use tools that help do it? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why not use tools that help do it? (Score:5, Informative)
One nice thing about virtualization. It's a lot easier to take a copy of a VM and spin it up somewhere so that the configuration *IS* the same and you can debug something without affecting the live systems. (Ok, technically there is a delta -- security permissions -- but that's the only thing that should be different, although it does sometimes make a difference.)