When to use a build tool?

Question

A beginner question, bear with me: I\'m just wondering under what circumstances one should use a build tool like nant or msbuild? I\'m working on a medium sized application (.ne

Answer 1

I think any non-trivial application needs a 'build tool'. We use the term Continuous Integration where I work. There are very exceptional cases (e.g.: I'm building a sample app to learn how feature X works), but aside from those, you'll never regret having a solid build process.

I guess that if the development team was made up of one person... I'd still set up a build system including a repository, a building tool, and multiple suites of tests. Yes, maintaining the build system costs time and money, but it will pay off (I've been working for 40 months now on a project that started with 6 developers, and includes about 30 developers now; it did pay off for us a number of times) in terms of quality control, and the sooner quality issues are detected, the cheape they are to fix.