[hinkley]

I have a Good Fences Make Good Neighbors trick I use, and some people call it a Canary Build.

When contributors to two different modules keep running into contract violations, you set up a CI build that triggers when either of the modules is built. If it fails it means that something got broken. It doesn't stop the build pipeline, but it warns you that garbage is about to come out the other end.

There's a general dynamic between people where peer pressure does not work when the delay between action and consequence grows too long. Nobody truly internalizes how upset other people are when they are found out for something bad they did a year ago, a month ago, or in some cases days ago (hence why roommates fight so often about chores). But getting called out for something you did two hours ago has sorted out an awful lot of bad behavior.

And the nice thing about the Canary Build is that in many CI tools you can set it up and not give him any permissions.

[lostcolony]

"It doesn't stop the build pipeline, but it warns you that garbage is about to come out the other end."

Why doesn't it? Prevent it from merge and build; require the dev to either fix it, or convince the rest of the team that the change should be allowed.

[J-Kuhn]

You make an API change.

The API change is communicated and approved by both parties.

You build the first thing.

Canary fails, because API has changed.

You change the other to match the new API.

Canary fails again, because it uses the most recent non-failed build.

???

Owner of the canary build is now shunned.

[lostcolony]

I think we must have very different expectations as to what a contract violation is.