Effective Build Management: Don't Build a House of Cards

et's face it—developers are creative folk who generally like to focus on what they do best: develop code. In many ways, they are similar to master chefs who delight in the planning and preparation of a meal but have little time to focus on the actual cooking. Just as a chef must be able to set an oven for the right temperature and trust that the results will be predictable and accurate, a developer must be able to depend on a build system that is automated, reliable, unobtrusive, and adaptable.

Traditionally, build systems have been an unsophisticated collection of scripts and manual steps, developed in-house. But three key trends in application development are driving up the complexity of these systems to the point that a new approach to build management is required. First, complications have arisen from the growing need to support a variety of environments, platforms, and languages. Second, code reuse and refactoring is rapidly increasing the rate of change in software applications and technology. And, perhaps most importantly, end users are simply demanding higher quality applications.