ART of S/W Development Award - BuildIT

I continue to be amazed by the number of applications that are developed by individuals, which become a major component to everyday life for a software developer. BuildIT, by Dan Petitt at CodeRanger.com, is a Task Automation tool for Windows. At first glance you might think, "just another macro recorder", which is what I thought. But upon further examination, I discovered how valuable this jewel is!

BuildIT provides the ability to create task automation scripts. These scripts can send emails, copy/move/delete files, play sounds, up/download files via ftp, get a web file, zip/unzip files, execute DOS commands, run a SourceSafe command, build Visual Studio and/or VB6 projects, and execute VBScript and JScript functions. Basically, the types of tasks that you might have to step through manually on a daily basis as part of your programming or file management tasks.


As an example, part of your daily build routine could be the following:

• Download some files from an FTP site
  
• Check out source files from SourceSafe
  
• Move the files to a specific folder
  
• Execute a Visual Studio build of the files
• Zip the built files into a single archive file
  
• Upload the completed build to the FTP site
• Check the source files back into SourceSafe
• Send an email to multiple addresses upon completion of the build
• Delete the old files from the temp build directory
  

Being able to automate these tasks not only saves a significant amount of time, but it helps to insure that you don't forget something along the way. (One unexpected phone call and totally throw off what you were planning on doing.) BuildIT also includes the ability to send an email upon the successful completion of the tasks, or when the script fails to execute. And you can assign who the Administrator(s) are for receiving those emails. A log file is generated, if needed, for keeping track of the executed tasks. Other nice features include a customizable toolbar, color coordinating of the tasks in the task list, a Always On Top option, and a global script editor.

Areas that are lacking are in the On-line help and documentation. And I would love to have the ability to copy/move/delete entire folders instead of individual files.

The ART of Software Development in BuildIT is that it is a very needed tool for any developer or individual responsible for building and distributing applications. Plus, it is a free trial application, in which the developer asks for a donation if you continue to use the product. (I highly recommend it.) The Web site for the product is pleasant and the developer keeps a blog journal of his activities on the product. He's very responsive via email to requests and is willing to add new features as requested by the user community.

I expect that BuildIT will continue to grow and mature as a significant tool for any programmer's toolbox. You can find BuildIT at www.coderanger.com.

Timothy Trimble
The ART of Software Development
http://www.timothytrimble.info
http://aswdreviews.blogspot.com