Say what you will about Microsoft, they know how to successfully build and

release software. Vince Maraia has been a key member of the build teams for

many of their major software releases over the last fifteen years. In this book he

distills the wisdom he has learned about building software, while also setting it

into the context of related steps, including configuration management and

deployment. While he uses Microsoft tools and case studies from within

Microsoft, the book is as tool-agnostic as possible, to make the ideas applicable

to the broadest possible range of readers. The book is written so that each

chapter builds upon the previous one, following the standard development

schedule; however, each chapter can also stand alone as a reference to that

particular piece of the process. Microsoft has been so successful at developing

build procedures that work that they will be incorporating many of them in the

forthcoming suite of products called Visual Studio 2005 Team System, so this

book is being released at a very opportune time.