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Developer Build Environment

Introduction​

The Developer Build Environment (DBE) is a crucial aspect of the SmoothGlue platform, dedicated to fostering collaboration, automation, and seamless operations among development teams. Positioned atop the SmoothGlue Core, the DBE integrates a suite of tools that facilitate the complete software development lifecycle, from planning and coding to continuous integration and documentation.

Purpose​

The DBE serves as a unified workspace tailored to optimize the developer experience by offering:

  • Integrated Collaboration: By consolidating tools like Jira, Confluence, and Mattermost, teams can plan, design, communicate, and document efficiently, all within a singular environment.
  • Centralized Code Management: GitLab integration ensures that code repositories, branching, and version control are streamlined and centralized.
  • Automated Workflows: With the inclusion of GitLab-Runner and the SmoothGlue Console, the DBE automates key tasks, ensuring consistency and efficiency in the development pipeline.
  • Security & Authentication: Keycloak provides a centralized single sign-on (SSO) solution, ensuring secure and simplified access to all integrated tools.
  • Holistic View: The DBE, combined with the SmoothGlue Core, offers a comprehensive overview of both frontend and backend operations, empowering developers with insights and control.

Key Components​

Collaboration & Communication​

  • GitLab: a robust platform for code repositories, version control, and collaborative code management
  • Jira: a project management tool tailored for ticketing, task prioritization, and sprint planning
  • Confluence: a wiki tool for documentation, design drafts, and collaborative content creation
  • Mattermost: a chat platform enabling real-time communication within development teams

Continuous Integration & Automation​

  • GitLab Runner: a scalable application that ensures continuous integration by automating the build, test, and deployment processes
  • SmoothGlue Console: a proprietary tool that automates the creation and synchronization of organizations, teams, users, and projects, streamlines role creation, and adheres to the principle of least privilege

Security & Authentication​

  • Keycloak: an open-source Identity and Access Management application that provides a centralized SSO solution to manage authentication and authorization, ensuring users have secure access to the right tools

Additional Tools​

  • SmoothGlue Pillars of Creation: (Further details will be covered in subsequent documentation.)
  • SonarQube: a tool dedicated to code and dependency, security scanning, and quality assessment

Conclusion​

The DBE embodies the ethos of SmoothGlue: optimizing the developer experience while ensuring resilience, scalability, reliability, and security. By integrating a diverse range of tools and automation into a unified platform, the DBE empowers developers to focus on what they do best: crafting outstanding software.