Selected Product:
| The Build Master: Microsoft's Software Configuration Management Best Practices (Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series)
Paperback
Author: Vincent Maraia
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Release Date: 2005-10-10
ISBN-10: 0321332059
ISBN-13: 9780321332059
List Price: $44.99
Average Customer Rating:
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Software Configuration Management Patterns: Effective Teamwork, Practical Integration
ISBN-10: 0201741172
ISBN-13: 0785342741179
List Price:$47.99
Deploying .NET Applications: Learning MSBuild and ClickOnce (Expert's Voice in .Net)
ISBN-10: 1590596528
ISBN-13: 9781590596524
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Software Configuration Management Patterns: Effective Teamwork, Practical Integration (Software Patterns Series)
ISBN-10: 0201741172
ISBN-13: 9780201741179
List Price:$52.99
Software Configuration Management Handbook, Second Edition
ISBN-10: 1580538827
ISBN-13: 9781580538824
List Price:$89.00
Practical Perforce
ISBN-10: 0596101856
ISBN-13: 9780596101855
List Price:$39.95
Expert .NET Delivery Using NAnt and CruiseControl.NET (Expert's Voice in .Net)
ISBN-10: 1590594851
ISBN-13: 9781590594858
List Price:$59.99
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
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.
The Build Master
| Customer Rating: | The book provides an excellent insight into the Microsoft organization's Software Configuration Management system. However, either the publisher or the author made many printing mistakes in the figures, letters were either left out or replaced with wrong letters in mass.
Other than the printing errors, the book is excellent. |
Several Microsoft ways that work and you can learn from
| Customer Rating: | While many people bash Microsoft for what they consider the dubious quality of their software products, there is no question that they must have an efficient configuration management system. With so many designers, developers and testers working on any single product, it would be very easy for any software development project to descend into chaos. Since Microsoft does manage to push new products out the door on a regular basis, they have to do a great deal right in the area of configuration management.
This book describes the Microsoft experience and strategies they use in managing their product build, testing, customer support and service pack cycles. There is also a chapter on some ways to change the corporate culture and the final chapter describes future build tools that will be released by Microsoft.
A great deal of the Microsoft experience is certainly expected, believable and worthy of emulating. Whatever the size of your development teams, the best way to learn efficient and effective ways of configuration management is to study what the biggest teams do. If they can do it efficiently then by copying them, you can get that same efficiency and perhaps squeeze it a little tighter due to your reduced size.
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A very useful book
| Customer Rating: | | This is a sorely needed book for anyone in the process of managing or introducing an automated build process into a development team. There is nothing ground-breaking here for experienced managers, however, it's a great reference book and covers all the major areas of concern regarding the build process. I've also found it to be a very useful resource to help build consensus in the team regarding the why the need for a build process and how to define it. This neatly fills a void in the book market. |
sketchy
| Customer Rating: | The fact that the author has been working for Microsoft and that he managed to get a foreword written by Jeffrey Richter do a good marketing job, but the book is disappointing.
No issue is treated in detail, and instead too many obvious remarks are provided (such as "Test the product fully before shipping..." or "No hardware is allowed to enter or leave the build lab without a team member's okay").
The only valuable idea is the so called Virtual Build Lab, which is nothing more than a separate codeline for a sub-project, which is merged to the real mainline only when it is stable enough. This idea comes naturally in big sized projects.
Berczuk book on Software Configuration Management is by far a much better choice.
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Good for an insight into very large builds
| Customer Rating: | This book does a great job of presenting the overall issues of builds, and SCM (software configuration management) as a whole. The way Maraia presents real Microsoft situations and short anecdotes with bold quotes of different Microsoft personnel make the book a fun and interesting read. As far creating the culture of enforcing SCM policies, he does a very good job at selling the concept and gives good examples why. I would even recommend getting the book just for sharing excerpts with managers and fellow developers who are otherwise resistant to culture change that suppports good SCM practices.
The only downside for me was that Maraia's position at Microsoft seems to be dedicated to SCM and the book gives examples of very large projects with lots of resources. For example, it was difficult for me to get anything out of his recommendations for the "build team" or the "build lab" because in most of my situations there's simply not enough resources dedicated to this process as much as we would like it to be. Still, if the book drives one point home it's that the process shoudn't be overlooked as trivial and the process itself can and maybe should redefine the way development is done in your team. |
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