Mike Clark
"Pragmatic Project Automation", the third book in the Pragmatic Programmers' Starter Kit series, authored by Mike Clark, is an invaluable asset for automating the grunt work of your Java development projects and raising your standards regarding quality, lead times in bug fixing, and eventually, the motivation of your whole team.
I read the book over a weekend in two sittings and enjoyed every minute of it. Mike has put together a series of high quality tutorials for setting up a repeatable build process using Ant, scheduling the build process using shell scripts, cron/at, and eventually CruiseControl, while keeping in the spirit of pragmatic thinking. He then continues by showing how to automate your release process and software deployment -- with both simple shell scripts and an open source graphical installer tool. To finish, he talks about different techniques for monitoring your software for errors.
I honestly couldn't find anything to complain about this book -- except that I wouldn't have minded reading another 150 pages of it.
(Lasse Koskela - Bartender, September 2004)
This isn't the kind of "software process" book that tries to sell you on following a methodology. There's no preaching, and there are no outlandish claims of productivity increases. Instead of selling snake oil, Mike Clark just wants to explain, in a clear, effective way, how to use open-source tools to automate your builds, release process, and application monitoring. Java tools like Ant, CruiseControl, and JUnit are the centerpieces of this book, but shell scripts and batch files also make cameo appearances.
There's even a section on assembling novel monitoring devices. Admit it -- wouldn't it be cool to have red and green Lava Lamps that light up according to the status of your project build?
The beginning programmer might wonder what all the fuss is about, but anyone tasked with delivering software on a schedule will appreciate the many ways in which this book will help them.
(Ernest Friedman-Hill - Sheriff, August 2004)