My previous look at SCons performance compared SCons and gmake on a variety of build scenarios — full, incremental, and clean. A few people suggested that I try the tips given on the SCons ‘GoFastButton’ wiki page, which are said to significantly improve SCons performance (at the cost of some accuracy, of course). Naturally, I [Read More →]

GNU make 3.82 hit the streets last week, the first new release of the workhouse build tool in over four years. Why so long between releases? To me the answer is obvious: the tool Just Works ™, so there’s no need to churn out new releases chasing the latest development fad. But as this release [Read More →]

[A version of this article appeared on eWeek http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/How-to-Make-Your-Automated-Software-Tests-Truly-Automatic/] A recent poll of software development professionals showed that the majority would rather be doing their taxes than dealing with their company’s test infrastructure. The reason: automated software tests require tremendous amounts of manual time and energy to configure, run, and monitor. This can be a [Read More →]