Automated Build Tools

Automated Build Tools

Here are the options that I have found so far to automate .NET builds:

TFS (Team Foundation Server) - This is Microsoft's answer to automated builds. Difficult to set up but it integrates well with Visual Studio and Defect Tracking.

CruiseControl – This tool basically runs a NAnt configuration file. There are a lot of pre-defined tasks that NAnt can perform such as getting the latest version from source control, building, and FTPing a file. The config files for NAnt are not that fun to set up.

MSDOS Batch File – If you don’t want to buy anything or mess with the convoluted NAnt config files, you can certainly build your own batch file and use windows task scheduler to schedule the build. There are many free command line programs available to email the log file, ftp files etc.

Commercial Automated Build Tools
Automated Build Studio
Final Builder
Visual Build Pro
TeamCity