Product Reviews
Automate the VB Build Process
A tool for the serious Visual Basic developer.
Although some stubborn proponents
of other languages refuse to admit it, there’s
a lot of serious software development going on using
Visual Basic these days. However, VB developers have
long had to do without many of the conveniences of modern
software development. For example, there’s no good
way built into the product to manage dependencies between
multiple Visual Basic projects.
G7x Build Manager aims to fill some
of this gap. This tool allows you to select a group
of VB projects (and, optionally, HTML and ASP pages
that use components developed with VB) and then scans
them for dependencies. It then allows you to handle
your entire build process with a single mouse click.
For example, if Project1.vbp uses a control from CP1.vbp,
and you change one file within each project, G7x is
smart enough to rebuild CP1 before rebuilding Project1.
 |
G7x is perfect for small projects,
but it can easily be used to simplify the process
for large, corporate development teams. |
Other features in the current version
(2.0) include the ability to set VB project options
from within the G7x interface and a fast way to fix
up missing references by dragging and dropping files.
They’re working on another version that will also
integrate with source code control, which should make
this a serious contender for automating the build process
in large organizations. Meanwhile, I’d recommend
it to any individual developer who has a substantial
development effort distributed among multiple Visual
Basic projects.
About the Author
Mike Gunderloy, MCSE, MCSD, MCDBA, is a former MCP columnist and the author of numerous development books.