Build Scripts
251 words.
Coding Horror advises, “So, if you don’t have a build script on your project, what are you waiting for?”
At work I’m responsible for roughly 100 .NET projects in a big SourceSafe repository. None of them have build scripts, and the prospect of writing roughly 100 build scripts is pretty daunting.
Not to say that I’m opposed to build scripts — I think they’re great. You get complete control of every aspect of the build. But I come from a C programming background where you had no choice but to write huge makefiles to build your projects. I don’t know about anyone else, but I find that not having to write a huge makefile for my projects is actually an improvement in the development experience. That’s the whole purpose of the IDE — to simplify development and alleviate the need for makefiles. So if there’s no particular need to make a build script, why make one?
There is also the issue of training. If and when I’m replaced at work, it is probably going to be by someone with considerably less experience than me. Most rookie developers coming out of school aren’t going to know a thing about build scripts (or SourceSafe repositories…). So if you throw them into an environment that uses build scripts exclusively, they will likely need a lot of help getting the projects built, let alone making changes to the projects. So if I put together 100 build scripts, I’d be doing a disservice to future generations.
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