Monday, October 8, 2007

Problem Solved

In my last post, I talked about how include dependencies in our code base were causing lengthy build times. Well thanks to this entry on Jeff Atwood's blog, Coding Horror, our problem was solved overnight. Okay, our problem really isn't solved. We still have include dependency issues, but they no longer affect our build times, thanks to Incredibuild.

Jeff's mention of Incredibuild has completely transformed my day at work. A build that used to take over twenty-five minutes now takes about five minutes. I no longer have to worry about switching tasks/contexts to fill twenty-five minute voids throughout my day. I no longer have second thoughts about working in certain areas of the code, knowing that any small change would require a full rebuild. Refactoring can occur much faster and adds to the wave of motivation that has swept through our team since we began using this product.

Incredibuild is by far one of the best products I've ever worked with. Not only does it work as intended, but it was incredibly easy to setup. After reading Jeff's post, I downloaded the trial version and had the software working on two of my machines in less than fifteen minutes. A quick "You have to check this out..." email to my fellow team-members resulted in us having a seven machine build network by the end of the day. At that point, we started bugging management to approve purchasing the software and we are now on our way to becoming a much more productive team.

I am still trying to eliminate some of the worst include-dependencies/coupling in our code. But I no longer have to wait twenty-five minutes to get any feedback for my effort.