IronPython for build scripting
Python is ideal for tasks like automating build processes. Similarly, in a .NET environment IronPython is a valuable tool. Steve Gilham has been putting IronPython to work in his current project.
Following on from the earlier post with the snippet about generating GUIDs -- and covering a good chunk of what's been occupying me since...
I have ended up in charge of the build system for the current project at work. This started out with one framework that used a number of custom projects inside a solution to perform unit test, FxCop and coverage analysis, with a lot of magic happening in post-build steps, including direct calls to Wix command-line utilities. Another team had developed a better separated MSBuild-based system, which split out things like the analysis and installer building from the assembly-building solution. We can argue the merits of taking the unit tests out of every checking compile; but separating out the installer build does have a significant benefit in terms of cycle time for a recompilation.
Frankensteining the two together was an interesting task; and IronPython has been a valuable component of the mix. As I noted quite a while ago, the convenience of an XCOPY install on a machine with a current .net installation (any build or dev machine), and the access to the full APIs makes for a powerful tool during a build -- it's not just the fact that you get better string manipulation than a batch file, or can easily spawn off a call to source control to get a synch-level value to stamp an assembly with.
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