Episode 16: Build Automation

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News

• New TLDs
• http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/blog-lol-foo-google-amazon-dominate-global-tld-applications/
• The anatomy of a profitable freemium
• http://wensing.tumblr.com/post/25167979206/the-anatomy-of-profitable-freemium
• LinkedIn passwords leaked
• http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-06-14/linkedin-s-stolen-passwords-spell-profit-for-gemalto
• $100 Master’s Degree
• http://www.i-programmer.info/professional-programmer/accreditation/4365-on-stat-class-udacity-and-open-ed-a-brief-chat-with-sebastian-thrun-.html
• Microsoft Surface Tablet
• http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/tablets/microsoft-surface-tablet-1085839/review

Tool of the Biweek

• Jason: Apache Cordova (formerly PhoneGap) http://incubator.apache.org/cordova/
• Patrick: XBMC http://xbmc.org/

Build Automation

History

• Makefile processors
• make (BSD) / gnumake
• Makefile code generators
• automake / qmake / cmake / premake
• Ant & Maven
• IDE Projects 

Features

• Dependency listing
• Flags for OS & compiler specific features
• Optimizations, threading libraries, etc.
• Conditional logic for different builds
• FFMpeg: build regular or patent-free (no MPEG-4)

Strengths

• Keeping the build process organized
• Calculating transitive closure of dependencies
• Parallelizing & Distributing build commands (http://www.distcc.org)

Weaknesses

• Inherent Complexity
• Obscured errors “Error 1” (various levels of verbosity)
• "Black Magic"

Tools

• GNU Automake
• CMake
• imake
• qmake
• nmake
• Apache Ant
• Apache Maven
• Premake

Uses

• Continuous Integration
• Source-based package management systems (Macports, Gentoo, deb-src)