Get a Professional build System
A thrown together system isn't very professional and depends upon one person who may be absent. It's how many companies start but once you get more than one developer, and start using version control systems (VCS) then you need to think about automating the process. Ideally you want an end to end system that pulls files out of the VCS, builds a complete installation, runs the regression test and reports any problems. That's the Holy Grail of development and achievable with Visual Build Pro 6.What are the Alternatives?
Alternatives to build systems like Visual Build Pro 6 include batch file systems which tend to be error prone, and not easy to maintain. I've been converting from a build system that used batch files: These suffered from non existent error handling, were a pain to debug and there was no easy way to stop at an error and then continue. This one had evolved over a 12 year period and a run took several hours to complete- from fetching files from a networked version control system, compiling all source code, copying built executables and finally creating an installation. If any part of this process failed then it usually had to be rerun.About Visual Build Pro 6
These aren't scripts in the conventional sense of the word but a series of steps, each a procedure that does something. If steps provide the code to run the build process, the C style macros are actually the variables in the process and correspond roughly to the %a..%z parameters you get with batch files. These can be defined globally or per project and can be nested up to 20 levels deep. Much of the power of VBP stems from this as you can switch folders, drives, builds etc by just changing a single macro value.
VERSION is 15By changing VERSION to say 16, every macro is automatically updated so RELDIR becomes c:\APPR16 and so on. Some of the compiler parameters are very long and difficult to edit in batch files. As macros it is a lot easier.
RELEASE is R%VERSION% (Eg R15)
EXE is APP%RELEASE% ( APPR15 )
RELDRIVE is C:
RELDIR is %RELDRIVE%\%EXE% (c:\APPR15 )
How Many Steps are Provided?
There are approximately 100 steps provided with VBP. These cover nearly every task you could think of, from running programs, scripts, setting macro values, compiling with Borland and Microsoft compilers, manipulating files by copy, delete etc and zipping/unzipping. It can also create installations using 13 different installers (You need to have the Installation software installed- that isn't included!). Other steps include registering type libraries, generating resource files, installing services, writing registry keys, internet services such as FTP, HTTP, mail, Telnet and lots more.Each step can be run conditionally- depending on whether a macro is defined/undefined, or contains/doesn't contain a particular string etc and on the existence or absence of folders or files. There is no need to rerun a step if it has built before this. Steps can also be rerun while the condition remains true.
Output from steps can be optionally logged and step failure can trigger other steps, eg send an email. Steps can also be built in projects and run from another step. Unusually for a system so powerful, it is very intuitive and easy to setup.
Easy to Configure Compiler Settings
It's important to specify compiler parameter strings such as include files as macros. On a big project you find the same compiler options are used many times, so cutting and pasting the compiler steps made it very quick to define.Each step name in a build can be renamed so you end up with very descriptive build definitions. A particular boon is the mouse flyover over macros which expands them and shows their value in a tool tip. Such a simple feature but one that makes designing a build considerably easier.
