What is Build Automation? Build automation manages the core of the build management process - the conversion of source code into binaries. Unlike workflow automation, build automation manages the build engines to provide build acceleration, consistency and organization within the software build. Without the ability to control what occurs during the build, workflow alone solutions rely on scripted build methods to support this critical part of the build to release effort. Build automation is needed in order to drive down into the lowest level of process management by controlling how the build is executed, accelerated and reported on. Without build automation, you cannot address build speeds, quality or consistency challenges all of which should be a core requirement of any build management solution. OpenMake Software offers build automation support with OpenMake Meister. Meister integrates with compilers, development tools and IDEs to accelerate and synchronize builds running inside the IDEs with the builds running outside the IDEs. Meister performs dependency management, build audit reporting and impact analysis, all of which are key elements for improving the quality and speed of your builds. Only build automation can deliver the speed and accuracy needed for supporting continuous integration and pre-commit build processing. Meister offers the build management solutions that enhance agile methods by addressing the heart beat of agile practices -the build itself. Meister's build automation is particularly useful for improving build speeds for all languages including Java and C. Because Meister's build automation manages at the compile and link level, Meister understands the application's dependency hierarchy. With this information, Meister knows what objects are up to date, and do not need to be rebuilt (build avoidance). Meister also has the intelligence to determine what objects have no dependencies and can be built in parallel. Meister leverages the power of multi-processor machines to distribute the workload of the compiler calls thereby drastically reducing build times. | Build vs. Workflow AutomationOpenMake Meister offers both build and workflow automation to provide you a complete build management solution that allows you to address all of your build to release challenges. Workflow automation works with build automation to support a process around the build itself. Meister also supports a workflow engine for distributed workload management for executing pre and post build steps. Workflow automation also uses remote agents to manage the workload of the workflow, referred to as distributed processing. Workflow, like job scheduling, does not integrate with tools and processes, but instead provides a standardized interface for calling utilities from the command line. Unlike build automation, workflow automation cannot accelerate or control the build itself - the conversion of source into binaries. Workflow automation solutions do not understand how the application's dependency information fits together. Without this key information, a build cannot be distributed across machines for faster processing. Workflow solutions cannot change a serial build script into a distributed build script. This is the job of build automation. In fact, workflow automation solutions do nothing at all to improve the build scripts. Therefore they can do nothing to improve your builds. Build automation is what is needed to improve the actual processing of your software compiles. |
Build Automation Solutions with Workflow
