Hi,

I am new to SCM, anyone could suggest how to go about managing builds and releases using Visual Source Safe 6.0d and VS 2005.
Though from all the material what I could garner from the web, I have learnt that we need to have a dedicated machine for build and release management. I am stuck at primarily at these
1) Is it a must and should that build tool needs to be in place, or can it be done using VS 2005 at the build machine.
2) The version numbers for build and releases should they be managed from the build machine only prohibiting developers to make any changes to version numbers.

The key thing is that you need to ensure:

- everything that is built comes out of your repository (VSS) and is clean (not changed locally). So one approach is to remove everything locally and do a clean get.

- the build process is reliable and repeatable - same results every time

Manual build processes are not good for satisfying the latter requirement - too many options for things to be done differently if the person doing things gets distracted etc.

It is certainly possible to use VS on the build machine to do your builds, but I would do it by driving VS from the command line. So a single batch file which causes VS to build everything is fine. Checkout command line options for devenv.exe - it's not hard.

As to version numbers - you should be checking these in, so as long as you control them that's fine.

HTH
Robert

Truly your response helps.

"So a single batch file which causes VS to build everything is fine. Checkout command line options for devenv.exe - it's not hard."

Yup, I shall look into those options, apart from that is there any online examples/help on the same.

"As to version numbers - you should be checking these in, so as long as you control them that's fine."

The checking in of version numbers, I believe should be done at the build machine, wherein the developers machine do not have the facility of changing the version number. Its only when the build/release is made from the build machine, the version number of the build/releases change.
Correct me if I am wrong on this.

Appreciate your response.
Thanks.
Zain

There's this really useful site called google where a search on a string like "devenv command line" might just find you some useful examples

See also:

devenv /?

As to versions, if I am building I don't care what developers do to them - I reserve the right to change things (and check them in).

Thanks a lot for your response. It really did make things clear for me.