Build Master, The: Microsoft’s Software Configuration Management Best Practices

Chapter 7. The Build Environment

	Philosophy: There are two ways of being creative. One can sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish.
	--Warren G. Bennis, author of bestselling book, On Becoming a Leader

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 ...