Easy Checkout of Earlier Code

Even if a developer checks out broken code for one reason or another, there's no reason she should be stuck with it: A good build server will let her know when the build was working successfully. She can simply point her workspace at the source code before the breakage occurred. Likewise, if a developer hasn't updated for a while, he can update to the latest working code with confidence.

For instance, each project in AnthillPro will have a status page like this one:

While the most recent build failed, the developer can see that the source at 1:44 was good, and update accordingly

Build servers typically perform their own workspace updates for most source control tools, usually based on date-time stamps. So when developers want the source code for a particular build, they will often just copy the checkout command from the log of the latest successful build and insert their own security credentials. With AnthillPro, the process takes about a minute.

svn checkout --non-interactive --username me --password ***** 
--revision {2008-08-21 17:42:42 +0000} https://myserver/myapp/trunk/.

Alternatively, several source control tools (most notably SVN and Perforce) have the concept of a global repository version. This version is also in the log, and can be checked out from. Many teams include that repository version in their development build numbers. Developers who receive successful build notifications by e-mail, RSS feed, or in their IDE can simply update to the version they see in the most recent successful build without having to log into the build server.

The fourth pillar of pain free building is focused on easily working around issues when there is a problem building. For developers, being able to quickly sync their workspace to a known good state is exceedingly helpful.