Notes on build script

Posted on By Shafiq Alibhai
  • 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
  • This is not a default option and one should not spend time at this in the beginning. This is a step more relevant to iterative improvement of the build script