In
software development, building software is an end-to-end process that involves many distinct functions. Some of these functions are described below.
Version control The
version control function carries out activities such as workspace creation and updating, baselining and reporting. It creates an environment for the build process to run in and captures metadata about the inputs and output of the build process to ensure repeatability and reliability. Tools such as
Git,
AccuRev or
StarTeam help with these tasks by offering tools to tag specific points in history as being important, and more.
Code quality Also known as
static program analysis/static code analysis this function is responsible for checking that developers have adhered to the seven axes of code quality: comments, unit tests, duplication, complexity, coding rules, potential bugs and architecture & design. Ensuring a project has high-quality code results in fewer bugs and influences nonfunctional requirements such as maintainability, extensibility and readability; which have a direct impact on the
ROI for a business.
Compilation This is only a small feature of managing the build process. The compilation function turns source files into directly executable or intermediate objects. Not every project will require this function. While for simple programs the process consists of a single file being
compiled, for complex software the source code may consist of many files and may be combined in different ways to produce many different versions.
Linking == Build tools ==