Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation

Chapter 6. Build and Deployment Scripting

Introduction

On very simple projects, building and testing the software can be accomplished using the capabilities of your IDE (Integrated Development Environment). However, this is really only appropriate for the most trivial of tasks. As soon as the project extends beyond a single person, spans more than a few days, or produces more than a single executable file as its output, it demands more control if it is not to become complex and unwieldy. It is also vital to script building, testing, and packaging applications when working on large or distributed teams (including open source projects), since otherwise it can take days to get a new team member up and running.

The first step is actually very simple: ...