Alcatel-Lucent nmake Product Builder

Overview

The Better Product Builder

In software development, product building is the process of converting source code into a machine-executable product. Typically, source code is integrated using a build process, which is repeated many times over the course of development. As such, the efficiency of the build process directly affects the productivity of the development team. An efficient build process is one that does the minimum work necessary to construct a new version of a product. Alcatel-Lucent nmake is designed to perform this task. Years of expertise in solving product building problems have been captured in the latest version of nmake; let it begin making a difference for your project team.

nmake facilitates a well established development process from software development through deployment which ultimately results in cheaper/better software development and maintenance. nmake's features enable simpler, faster and more accurate builds. The viewpathing feature supports key build types throughout the development cycle, including local developer builds for unit testing, continuous and/or nightly integration builds, system test and release builds.

nmake is an advanced, flexible, scalable build tool that improves software build specification, maintenance, and execution in three broad areas: performance, productivity and build accuracy. Build performance is key to overall software development productivity: fast developer builds minimize lost developer time while fast project builds allow more frequent integration builds leading to higher quality, on-time delivery. nmake's powerful build avoidance, reliable dependency-based incremental build, and concurrent/distributed build features significantly speed up builds.

nmake enhances productivity by automating much of the effort normally required to set up and maintain software builds, reducing staff time needed for build maintenance activities. nmake's use of high-level rule-based build specifications, built-in knowledge of popular compilers and tool chains, hierarchical rule organization, and platform probe tool dramatically reduce effort to set up builds while enhancing build accuracy and portability. Web-based build log views speed drill-down into complex logs.

nmake improves build accuracy, allowing production of a higher quality software product in shorter time. Automatic dependency management eliminates an important class of build errors, the powerful viewpathing feature allows building from a single source reducing errors due to file synchronization problems, and automatic platform probe reduces platform configuration issues.

Features

• Distributed and parallel execution supports product builds on both single processor and multiprocessor machines, which can be distributed over a network of workstations.
• Viewpathing provides several key benefits including build avoidance, allowing developers to share code while maintaining private development areas, and allowing separation of source from derived objects.
• Automatic dependency generation greatly simplifies build setup by determining implicit prerequisites dynamically by means of a programmable scanning language.
• Powerful rule language uses variables, flow control and built-in attributes to allow fine tuning and provides flexibility to support complex builds.
• Built-in Rules automatically generate customized platform-specific build commands.
• Project-specific and user-specific rules facilitate the creation of concise, consistent and flexible makefiles.
• Efficient shell interface allows communication with the shell over a pipe or network pipe. Actions are passed to the shell in a block without intervening backslash and semicolon characters.
• Efficient makefile processing minimizes work by compiling makefiles and remembering the previous build status.
• Language Support for source files written in almost any language (C, C++, Java, ESQL/C, assembler, M4, FORTRAN, troff).
• Persistent Build State reduces errors by triggering rebuilds when necessary.
• Continuing improvement incorporates research in configuration management into future releases.
• Optional Structured Build Log facilitates automated semantic build log processing and analysis.
• Web based build logs provide high level and detail views into build to enhance visibility and diagnostics.

Benefits

Project teams have used nmake to:

• Reduce project build effort by a factor of 1.5 to 2 because less effort is needed to write and maintain makefiles.
• Decrease fork and exec times by a factor of 2 to 5 due to the efficient shell interface.
• Decrease large makefile processing time by a factor of 10 when targets are up to date.
• Reduce disk space by a factor of 2 due to viewpathing.
• Decrease makefile size by a factor of 5 to 10.
• Reduce build times by a factor of 4 to 6 through parallel target script execution and remote building in a local area network.
• Decrease time to analyze failed project builds by a factor of 2 to 3 using formatted structured build logs.

Alcatel-Lucent nmake has a long, proven track record, and has been used successfully in hundreds of projects within Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, and elsewhere. For more details see Features and Benefits.