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Two Sigma logoTwo Sigma · Feature trail

Head-to-Head Development System

2 posts · Jul 2017

What this trail covers

Two Sigma is developing a 'Head-to-Head Development' system to manage software versioning and releases for a large number of developers and interconnected components. This system aims to address challenges in scalability, incrementality, and stability by focusing on efficient build and test processes, fine-grained dependency management, and robust infrastructure. The system also aims to foster cultural shifts towards shared code ownership and dependency trust. This post introduces the core principles of trunk-based development, monorepos, source integration, gated sharing, and implicit versioning as the foundation of their approach.

All Two Sigma trails
  1. Introduction to Head-to-Head Development, Part 2This post details the challenges encountered in implementing a 'Head-to-Head Development' approach, focusing on scalability issues related to performance, dependency granularity and types, monorepo tooling, and change serialization. It also elaborates on incrementality challenges (locality, granularity, detection methods) and stability challenges (reproducibility, consistency, infrastructure reliability). Finally, it discusses cultural challenges such as gate overloading, shared code ownership, dependency trust, and test coverage, as well as scenario challenges like third-party dependencies.
  2. Introduction to Head-to-Head Development, Part 1This post introduces the 'Head-to-Head Development' system, explaining its rationale and core principles. It details the problems faced by large organizations with multiple interconnected components regarding dependency management and technical debt. The solution, 'Head-to-Head Development,' is presented as a combination of Trunk-Based Development, Monorepo, Source Integration, Gated Sharing, and Implicit Versioning. It contrasts these practices with common alternatives and emphasizes the goal of maintaining a single master version ('head') of each component at all times, validated through pre-push tests (code review, build, and tests).