I like to say that there are really only two types of builds: ones that work and ones that don’t. Seriously, though, when you’re shipping a product, you should consider these two different types of builds:
- Developers’ (local machine builds)— These types of builds often happen within an editor such as Visual Studio, Emaqs, Slick, or VI. Usually, this is a fast compile/link of code that the developer is currently working on.
- Project (central build process)— This type of build typically involves several components of an application, product, or a large project, such as Windows, or in some cases several projects included in a product, such as Microsoft Office.
The developer’s build process should be optimized for speed, but the project build process should be optimized for debugging and releases. I am talking about optimizing the process, not compiler or linker optimization switches. Although speed and debugging are important to everyone who is writing code, you must design a project build process to track build breaks and the offender(s) as quickly as possible because numerous people are waiting for a build to be released. For a developer, what seems to be most important is clicking some type of Build and Run button to make sure the code compiles without errors and then checking it in. For the build team, building without errors and having the ability to track down the person who broke the build is the most important thing.
Reference: The Build Master: Microsoft’s Software Configuration Management Best Practices
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