Java™ deployments are often messy, error-prone, and manual, leading to delays in making software available to users. In Part 2 of this two-part article, automation expert Paul Duvall expands on a collection of key patterns for developing a reliable, repeatable, and consistent deployment process capable of generating one-click deployments for Java applications.

Managing source-code dependencies among projects and tools is often a burden, but it doesn't need to be. In this installment of Automation for the people, automation expert Paul Duvall describes how you can use the Apache Ant project's Ivy dependency manager to handle the myriad dependencies that every nontrivial Java™ project must manage.

Although many development teams use version-control systems to manage code changes, they can struggle when developers code off the same code base, in parallel. In this Automation for the people installment, automation expert Paul Duvall shows how to effectively tag, branch, and merge source code using the open source, freely available Subversion version-control system.

Automated builds aren't just for development teams — they can be extended to facilitate moving software from development all the way into production. This article describes how to use Ant with Java™ Secure Channel for remotely deploying software into multiple target environments.

Installing software is often a painful chore for most users. The installation package you generate — the "last mile" of software development — can make the difference between user adoption and another product thrown into the virtual waste bin. In this installment of Automation for the people, automation expert Paul Duvall demonstrates how the freely available, open source IzPack tool for writing wizard-based installers can make installing your software a snap for users.

This article describes some basic practices and techniques that you can use in MSBuild to better manage and control your build projects in Visual Studio.

The cost impact to a company of a failed project can be severe indeed. The impact on the reputation of the project manager can be disastrous.
Numerous methodologies are available for mitigating these risks – PRINCE2, RUP, DSDN, eXtreme programming – and these have helped to some extent. This document introduces the 3D™ methodology – a set of best practices and quality tools developed by BuildMonkey, which can be summarised as: De-risk. Deploy. Deliver.

In the past three articles in this series, you've built a simple but functional Web application using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). In this article, you'll use Apache Tomcat as your example servlet container, because it's both widely used and available at no cost. Other servlet containers will behave similarly. You'll often be deploying to an existing server; but if not, the links in the Resources section at the end of this article point you to the Tomcat download location. If you're running the Microsoft® Windows® operating system, Tomcat has a binary installer for Windows that's relatively simple to use. If you're on a Mac or a UNIX® system, there's a compiled version that you can extract and place in a convenient location (/usr/local is common); after setting a few environment variables, you're good to go.

Ant is arguably the de facto build tool for the Java™ platform; however, other build tools, which support a more expressive paradigm that XML lacks, are entering the scene. In this installment of Automation for the people, automation expert Paul Duvall describes how Raven, a build platform built on top of Ruby, leverages the power of a full-featured programming language with the simplicity of a build-centric Domain Specific Language.

This article shares experience and mine patterns in software build and release management.