At first glance, building and deploying applications seem simple enough. But in fact, difficult releases without any confidence or processes backing them are very common. Integration and management of a new deployment can be laborious and fraught with risk. So as team size and volume of projects grow, management becomes more difficult and risk more pronounced.

This book is a guide to the implementation of good processes in a .NET environment. Author Marc Holmes focuses on actual implementation, and details patterns and anti-patterns to watch out for. He also provides a practical and in-depth look at NAnt and CruiseControl.NET, and solutions to common problem scenarios.

* Chapter 1 takes a look at a fictional scenario and then discusses principles and arguments for the introduction of automated delivery processes.
* Chapter 2 introduces NAnt and discusses the ins and outs of the tool itself.
* Chapter 3 covers in more depth at the core NAnt tasks we're bound to come across, with some discussion of the merits of these.
* Chapter 4 takes a piece of software and shows how to begin implementing automated delivery through NAnt.
* Chapter 5 gets a little more complex and implements (and refactors) the same processes across multiple software systems with some more complex examples.
* Chapter 6 furthers the processes using continuous integration and CruiseControl.Net, once again refactoring as appropriate.
* Chapter 7 teaches how to extend NAnt and build a custom task.
* Chapter 8 covers some complex territory using Red Gate's DB tools and some custom tasks to perform automated database integration.
* Chapter 9 introduces CodeSmith and XSLT to aid the processes through code (or script) generation techniques.
* Chapter 10 wraps up and considers what's been accomplished, and what the future may hold.

Author: Mark Holmes
Published: APress, May 9, 2005