Build Automation: Making Your Development Process A Little Easier
Understand how build automation helps to simplify getting your code deployed pain-free.
Throughout your journey into tech, you come across various terms and acronyms that sound very pretty important and relevant, but their understanding seems to fall short of your knowledge. One of those terms for me was “build automation”. I knew that it was an important part of piecing together a complete application, but beyond that, I didn’t know how it fits into the process of software development. As I’ve spent more and more time learning different build automation tools, I have seen the importance of how this puzzle piece fits into the software development process as a whole, and I will try my best to help others understand as well!
For me, I always try to relate new things I learn to other information/tools that I feel I have a pretty good grasp of. As I have gotten older, one of those things that I have learned to enjoy is cooking. Many times when I’m learning new terms or pieces of the software development puzzle, I try to see how that may translate into some form of cooking. I used this technique to gain a better grasp of build automation.
Let's say we want to make some pasta. Most of us will fill a pot with water, turn on the stovetop, place the pot on the burner, add our pasta to the boiling water, and then drain our pasta. But what if we didn’t have these different tools at our disposal? What if we had to gather tinder and start a fire? What if we had to make our pasta from scratch? Over time, these small steps become increasingly more time-consuming and tedious, especially when we want to make more pasta. Having the different tools at our disposal may not be necessary, but they make our lives a whole lot easier.
Build automation is one of those tools in the life of a software developer. The process of build automation is where a developer can rely on their tools to compile all of their code, package up any dependencies they may be using, and run automated checks to ensure everything is working as expected. Build automation helps the developer “make and cook their pasta”. They don’t have to worry about going out and finding the source code for their dependencies, nor do they have to worry about the process of compiling binary code into an entire package. Developers implement various tools, such as Maven, to help with the build automation process.
As I mentioned, Maven is one tool used in the build automation process and uses a Project Object Model file (pom.xml) that helps configure and store information about a project. Maven is defined as a software project management and comprehension tool.¹ What that means is that Maven helps developers to build their projects, including compiling source code and handling the import of necessary dependency code. Maven can also generate documentation about the project and the project’s structure. This documentation can also be customized by the development team, which is one of the many benefits of Maven. Maven is easy to learn and use and has a consistent file structure meaning any projects using Maven that a developer works on will be easy to navigate and understand.
Maven is used in over 2,000 companies throughout various industries like financial services, banking, healthcare, and information technology. Companies like JP Morgan Chase and Co, Red Hat, and Accenture use Maven to assist in their DevOps processes, ensuring efficiency in the code integration and improving application uptime.
While I only discussed Maven, there are many other tools that can be used to assist in build automation. I encourage everyone to do some research and be flexible in their choices — you always have to pick the right tool for the job!
