The Build Master: Microsoft's Software Configuration Management Best Practices

by Vincent Maraia

Say what you will about Microsoft, they know how to successfully build and release software. Vince Maraia has been a key member of the build teams for many of their major software releases over the last fifteen years. In this book he distills the wisdom he has learned about building software, while also setting it into the context of related steps, including configuration management and deployment. While he uses Microsoft tools and case studies from within Microsoft, the book is as tool-agnostic as possible, to make the ideas applicable to the broadest possible range of readers. The book is written so that each chapter builds upon the previous one, following the standard development schedule; however, each chapter can also stand alone as a reference to that particular piece of the process. Microsoft has been so successful at developing build procedures that work that they will be incorporating many of them in the forthcoming suite of products called Visual Studio 2005 Team System, so this book is being released at a very opportune time.

Genres: Technology

249 pages, Paperback

First published October 10, 2005

Reviews

[Muhammad Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're in the business of software product development and management and are not using a continuous build and configuration management system, then you should definitely reconsider your approach. This book offers insight into how Microsoft handles its product build processes, it's always interesting to learn from the world's most successful software outfit - finding out about Microsoft isn't easy, so any bit of inside info is useful.

Regardless of this book being out-of-date, especially with the influence of continuous integration and delivery, and the large-scale adoption of Agile development processes; where information is freely available on the net - I still recommend this book to those who have little or no experience on effectively maintaining product code, what you'll learn is the following:
- Processes, techniques and tools to make build, configuration management, integration and testing easier, more controllable and predictable
- Change the way you think: The people in power is the Build, Integration and CM team, not component developers. Learn ways to control check-ins, find out about Triage and WAR room. Learn about Dogfooding
- Interesting side-notes on the inner workings on Microsoft, containing memos from Bill Gates himself, Microsoft's management philosophy, etc

If you're not a fan of Microsoft or your products are not based on Windows, then this book isn't for you. There are plenty of good resource material available on the web...

[Krishna Kumar · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good introduction to build processes, but fell short of my expectations. The book discusses many activities and tools (hardware/software) associated with creating and delivering good builds. It also mentions how it was done at Microsoft. Unfortunately, the book lacks coherence in putting it all together. It fails to discuss the relative importance of various activities and how it can be tailored to different types of organizations. There is also little exploration of the different types of applications (desktop, web, etc.) and how the build processes may differ in each.