Pragmatic Project Automation: How to Build, Deploy, and Monitor Java Apps by Mike Clark

Pragmatic Project Automation: How to Build, Deploy, and Monitor Java Apps

Features

Cover Type: Paperback with 176 pages

Published by: The Pragmatic Programmers

Edition: 1st Edition August 2004

Written in: English

ISBN 10 Number: 0974514039

ISBN 13 Number: 978-0974514031

Book Dimensions: 8.7 x 7.3 x 0.6 inches

Weighs: 12.8 ounces

Product Description
Forget wizards, you need a slave--someone to do your repetitive, tedious and boring tasks, without complaint and without pay, so you'll have more time to design and write exciting code. Indeed, that's what computers are for. You can enlist your own computer to automate all of your project's repetitive tasks, ranging from individual builds and running unit tests through to full product release, customer deployment, and monitoring the system. Many teams try to do these tasks by hand. That's usually a really terrible idea: people just aren't as good at repetitive tasks as machines. You run the risk of doing it differently the one time it matters, on one machine but not another, or doing it just plain wrong. But the computer can do these tasks for you the same way, time after time, without bothering you. You can transform these labor-intensive, boring and potentially risky chores into automatic, background processes that just work. In this eagerly anticipated book, you'll find a variety of popular, open-source tools to help automate your project. With this book, you will learn:

How to make your build processes accurate, reliable, fast, and easy.
How to build complex systems at the touch of a button.
How to build, test, and release software automatically, with no human intervention.
Technologies and tools available for automation: which to use and when.
Tricks and tips from the masters (do you know how to have your cell phone tell you that your build just failed?)

You'll find easy-to-implement recipes to automate your Java project, using the same popular style as the rest of our Jolt Productivity Award-winning Starter Kit books. Armed with plenty of examples and concrete, pragmatic advice, you'll find it's easy to get started and reap the benefits of modern software development. You can begin to enjoy pragmatic, automatic, unattended software production that's reliable and accurate every time.

Reader Reviews
If you are doing any serious software development, then you have tasks that need to be automated. Your build process, unit tests, deployment, measurements of quality, and other metrics for project management can all be automated once, and then created over and over again, basically 'for free'. This is what computer do, right? So why not let them do it for software development? Mike Clark does an excellent job describing both the 'high-level why' of project automation, as well as real-world 'low level' examples. He describes project automation with shell scripts, tools like Ant and CruiseControl, automation of routine tasks in CVS, and create automated 'status reports' with things like log4j and RSS feeds of data from your build report. The day after reading this book, I had modified our automated build to send an email to my cell phone if it failed - along with the names of everyone who had commited a change since the last successful build. While not every project needs this level of paranoia, this kind of 'project safety net' gives us great confidence in the quality of our code. It's hard to say what could be improved about this book - its biggest strength and its biggest weakness are its size... at 150 pages, I feel like there could have been so much more said on the subject... on the other hand, the books size makes it very approachable - you can pick it up, read it, learn something, and use it that same day. If the book were any larger, it would run the risk of trying to say too much, not saying it as clearly, and dating itself much more quickly. This book (actually all three of the prag prog 'starter kit' are on our team bookshelf, and are considered part of our project's documentation. Comment | | (Report this)

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Updated on 6-3-2008.