Improving Your Build Process

Question

Or, actually establishing a build process when there isn\'t much of one in place to begin with.

Currently, that\'s pretty much the situation my group faces. We do web-a

Answer 1

When taking on a project that has never had an automated build process, it is easier to take it in steps. Do not try to swallow to much at one time, otherwise it can feel overwhelming.

1. First get your code compiling with one step using an automated build program (i.e. nant/msbuild). I am not going to debate which one is better. Find one that feels comfortable to you and use it. Have the build scripts live with the project in source control.
2. Figure out how you want your automated build to be triggered. Whether it is hooking it up to CruiseControl or running a nightly build task using Scheduled Tasks. CruiseControl or TeamCity is probably the best choice for this, because they include a lot of tools you can use to make this step easier. CruiseControl is free and TeamCity is free to a point, where you might have to pay for it depending on how big the project is.
3. Ok, by this point you will be pretty comfortable with the tools. Now you are ready to add more tasks based on what you want to do for testing, deployment, and etc...

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Our build process is a bunch of homegrown Perl scripts that have evolved over a decade or so, nothing fancy but it gets the job done. One script gets the latest source code, another builds it, a third stages it to a network location. We do desktop application development so our staging process also builds install packages for testing and eventually shipping to customers.

I suggest you break it down to individual steps because there will be times when you want to rebuild but not get latest, or maybe just need to re-stage. Our scripts can also handle building from different branches so consider that also with whatever solution you develop.

Finally we have a dedicated build machine that rebuilds the trunk and maintenance branches every night and sends out an email with any problems or if it completed successfully.