- Choose a language that can be used in multiple platforms (very important for a Java project)
- Ensure that as many steps are automated. Begin with a full clean up and allow full build and deployment to the server
- Automate even server restart to increase developer efficiency
- Each build should ensure that it recompiles all classes and optionally fetches latest code from the repository
- Stale references to others code is the most frequent offense among developers. So use the build script to enforce some discipline too
- While writing a build script, one needs to take care of small short cuts that can help in a faster build and deployment
- Deploy only HTML and JSP
- Deploy only compiled java classes
- Do only a restart
- Deploy only properties files