Reading: Pragmatic Project Automation

I’m currenly reading Mike Clark’s "Pragmatic Project Automation". I purchased it last week after reading the online PDF of chapter 3 where Mike goes through the steps of setting up CruiseControl. Just using that chapter allowed me to setup CruiseControl for our current project at work. I figured if one chapter was that helpful, getting the whole book is a must.

I really like the book. I’m a big believer in automating all that I can, that is part of the motivation behind the creation of Rake. Mike provides a lot of great ideas and I can’t wait to try them out. (BTW, Rake gets a footnote mention on page 40, Woo Hoo!).

The book is targeted at the mainstream Java audience, so it talks a lot about ant and Cruise Control. Ruby and non-Java scripting languages are mentioned only in passing, but this is reasonable given the size and scope of the book. Mike says that he wants to encourage non-Java scripting and that the www.pragmaticautomation.com website will feature Ruby whenever he can.

And true to his word, today he posted a stakeout script that runs his unit tests whenever a file changes. Check it out.

Oh, and check out the book too.

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Reading: Pragmatic Project Automation