Is there a de-facto Automated build system?

[Efitap]

Title says most of it.

I'm wondering what's out there for automating daily builds with version control and automatic deployment to target clients, i.e:

- Get latest from sourcesafe
- Bump up version info (we write C++ / win32 exclusively)
- Build projects in specific order
- Create deployment package using installshield scripts
- Deploy the new build to target test computers / platforms.

I am completely new to automated build systems, and would love to get some feedback on whether there's a defacto product that does this (like rose was for UML, VS is for the developers on windows, SS is for source control on windows, etc)

All answers and experiences appreciated.

[Efitap]

Ok, I am assuming from the lack of replies, that there is no such thing as a defacto build system, so I'm down to the alternative question: What do you folks use, and are you happy with it? :)

[TheCPUWizard]

For .Net applications, I typically use MSBuild. On other platforms, I will typically use nMake or one of the variants....

[Yves M]

We use a manual build system, which is a bit of a pain. But there are a couple of steps that prevent automation unfortunately.

[TheCPUWizard]

But there are a couple of steps that prevent automation unfortunately.


I would be interested in finding out what they are..... I have (usually) been successful in automating even the most complicated build processes.

As an "interesting story"....

About two years ago I was under contract to a major bank here in NY. They had an aoutmated nightly build. One developer was assigned to come in early (7:30AM compared to 9:00AM) to verify that the build when smoothly and fix any errors that he/she could if it failed.

Whenever the build did fail, the person responsible for the failure was identified and became the new "designated" employee (until the build failed again).

It was a very effective incentive policy to ensure that code checked into the build system would build and pass all unit tests :) :) :)

[Efitap]

Thanks for all your replies so far.

Manual builds are kind of what we already do today and would like to automate. I'm testing something named "Automated Build Studio", some sort of macro program that decently put together what looks like something we can easilly use.

There is only one thing - the lack of functionality to bump up file versions and project versions in .rc files, but I already have that sorted out through own code, so I can simply execute that to get that problem out of the way.

I'll let you know how it goes (the trial is 30 days, and I'll scrutinize it carefully before making a decision)

[Efitap]

Automated QA's "Automated Build Studio" is our selection after several tests done.

We wrote a few helper apps to bump version numbers, get and make release notes, but aside from that, we now have automated:

- Retrieve latest from our SCM
- Bump the revision number in all apps
- build all our libraries
- build the applications
- Extract all language strings in code and prepare them for translation
- Run installshields scripts for creating web installers and CDROM installers
- Create ISO images for the CDROM installers that also contain full product documentation
- Move everything to a dedicated folder on our application server so our testers can download the latest build and start testing.

AutomatedQA disappointed us in some aspects, such as not being able to fully "understand" a solution file and build an entire software solution at the time, nor is making ISO's or running installshield scripts worthwile doing with the program's built in macros for this, but their "execute DOS command" option makes the option available to us for executing our own code, thus we just wrote the scripts and executables to achieve the last tidbits that ABS couldn't do to our satisfaction.

by the way - nightly builds rule!