Automated Builds?

[jshurst]

My manager has asked me to investigate automated building of our .NET projects (1.1 and 2.0). Can someone explain to me what needs to be done for automated builds. For example, let's say I have a 1 page that needs to be deployed. I would like to get this page from VSS and build and deploy the project, however I don't understand how to tell the tool to get that particular page and leave other ones. Also, are automated builds worth it?

Also, I'm looking at MSBuild and Nant, any suggestions?

Thanks,

J

 

[jmeckley]

I worked with nant in a seminar, but since returning from training I haven't picked it up. msbuild and nant are very similiar I don't think there are any major differences. VS use msbuild to produce the debug/release assemblies.

nant has some very slick features I witnessed in class, don't know if msbuild has them or not. if you don't like xml or manual configuration don't use nant that's all it is. i'm not aware of any GUI's for msbuild either.

as for deployment is it worth the effort to only deploy 1 page instead of the the entire application/website? if any changes were made to the code behind you would need to publish the web app ddl as well.

I think final builder is a tool for deploying final application builds. my projects are small enough I just use the publish feature in VS05.

As for automation, the more you can automate the better. I just started test automation in the fall and it was worth the learning curve. Right now my testing configuration uses MbUnit, Rhino.Mocks, Rhino.Testing. At somepoint i want to come back and revisit nant along with CC.Net.

the final result of all these tools is a continious integration system which pulls the current source from svn, compiles, runs all the tests and produces a detailed pass/fail report each night.


Jason Meckley
Programmer
Specialty Bakers, Inc.