Our October meeting will continue with another topic from our “Ideas on Software Configuration Management” series. This month we will be discussing build tools. In an effort to try out different meeting formats, we’re going to be having a shoot-out style meeting. 4 presenters have graciously, and tentatively, offered their time for this month’s topic. Our presenters and their tools of choice will include (in alphabetical order):

We are in the process of preparing a sample application which will be used as the benchmark for each presenter to make the case for their respective tool. Each build tool must be able to execute the unit tests located in the sample project as well as build a set of predetermined artifacts (which could ideally be used for deployment purposes). Each presenter will have a total of 15 – 20 minutes to present. After the last presentation, our presenters will form a panel to answer any questions people have about the tools.

The primer for this month’s presentation will go into more detail about the sample application and the requirements facing the presenters as well as some basics as to why we want to use build tools, and for that matter, a build process.

Stay tuned for more details!

NOTE : We’ve decided to exclude the topic of dependency management from this presentation for simplicity’s sake. Is there anyone who is really passionate about
us including this topic? If so, please comment on this post so we can give our presenters enough time to prepare.