Question

I hear developers talking about build scripts on here from time to time.

I develop a three tier application that has a few clients in the presentation layer. When I want to execute an update, I follow a number of steps:

1) Publish the asp.net app to two servers
2) Copy the DLLs of the windows forms app to the relevant server
etc

Now the application is getting bigger; I am looking to automate these steps. This is what I assume people mean by ‘build scripts’. I have had a look at the following webpage: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/7xctbe2f%28v=vs.90%29.aspx. I assume ‘build scripts’ simply means a .bat file in the Build Events dialog box (in Visual Studio), or is there something more sophisticated?

Answer 1

I think that after powershell is much more powerful than a simple bat, usually in powershell you can check for pre-conditions and then react accordingly chaining methods one by one.
The packaging is performed by using visual studio intaller projects which could have bat files
But other deployments might need the system administrators to run pre and post powershell scripts