Every build process that I have ever seen has a build environment, even if the people using it are not aware of it. This is the way things should be. GUI (Graphical User Interface) or visual build tools are good if you are short on resources and are willing to give up your control of the build process to another company's build tool. As mentioned in Chapter 5, "Build Tools and Technologies," the majority of the build labs at Microsoft use command-line tools to build software and not some kind of visual shell not even the Visual Studio IDE (Integrated Development Environment). The key to setting up a reproducible, consistent build is to create the correct build environment and standardize it throughout the team.
This chapter presents an example of how to set up a build environment using batch (or command) files and nmake. The example is targeted for a Wintel application. If you are unfamiliar with nmake and want to learn more about the tool, see www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/cits/interopmigration/unix/unixbld/unixbld1.mspx. However, you do not need to be familiar with the nmake syntax. What is more important is how the environment is set up and used to build. The examples in the chapter can be used with any build tool whether it is ANT, MSBuild, or VCBuild; just switch out the reference to the tool. This is how every build environment should be set up; it should just be a matter of finding/replacing a tool name and the location in the files. |