Not just compile and package
October 1, 2009 —
(Page 1 of 6)
Build management: It’s not just compile and link anymore—coding and quality standards have become an indispensable for agile development, experts say.
Compile and link is a key step in continuous integration where code is compiled into binary code and linked to build a program. Traditionally, it was the norm to run this process once every several days or weeks during a software development project.
But agile development encourages frequent changes of source code, and the present compile-and-link process needs to be able to rebuild applications frequently. Not only that, but today’s build management has also grown to involve tasks such as running static analysis to prevent quality problems, or running unit tests and code coverage.
“There’s more to build management today from various angles,” said Maciej Zawadzki, president of Urbancode. “Build management now is used to enforce coding standards and quality standards, so because of that, a build actually does more than just compile and package.”
As all these tasks are incorporated into build management, and with agile development gaining more and more popularity, build management is clearly becoming more complex.
Tracy Ragan, COO of OpenMake Software, called the term build management “diluted.” She agreed that, historically, build management consisted of the compile-and-link process, but she noted that some companies that currently sell build management software offer mostly just job scheduling functionality that allows development teams to chain together their application life-cycle management tasks.
“For example, a workflow tool lets you create checkouts, and as soon as your checkout process is completed, your build scripts go and execute; when that’s done, you can do your testing or static code analysis,” Ragan said. “Those workflow tools don’t drive into any one of those activities and improve the performance of the activity, they simply do as they’re told and execute them.”
Dave Locke, IBM Rational’s director of marketing, said that compile and link is the lightest-weight approach to build management. Build management can also tie into agile development by automating heavyweight activities like static analysis and disaster recovery planning.
Related Search Term(s): agile
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