Gardening indeed!

>Check out may not be the correct terminology. For example, with Git, you don't really "check out" as used by Source Safe, TFS, or Subversion. With Git, every developer has the entire source code on their local disk and just work with it. Check in goes to the local copy. Push is the terminology used to get code to the server.
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>But no, you probably wouldn't checkout the entire module, but only the specific things you intend to change, and then only when you actually change them. When they pass tests locally, you then pull code to see if anyone updated it while you were working on it. You then resolve conflicts and test again. When all conflicts are resolved and tests pass locally, you check in (push).
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>CI will not resolve the conflicts. That not what its job is. See http://www.manning.com/free/green_kawalerowicz.html (your name and email are required to get access).
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>Note that my next Software Gardening column in .Net Curry Magazine will cover CI. This will be the November/December issue.
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>>Perhaps I did assume that a bit. :)
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>>My point was - the developer would check out the spark plug module and iterate through a set of different designs, with many failing the unit test(s). I'm using it to get a picture in mind. So the spark plug would be checked out the entire time? What if another developer discovered that platinum was a better core? That discovery made it through tests and into the main line. Would CI involve trickling that back to the spark plug module dev?