Good approach for specificying list of build commands for a custom build application

Question

HI, I have a custom build application which I use to build solutions using a console application using command line and this will run a set of commands such as compile, download source files, deploy etc. However I also want to provide debug functionality for running a specific set of commands only rather than a full build. Any suggestions for good approaches?

Answer 1

Keep it simple. I'd use a plain text file. Each line is a command followed by optional parameters. Add conditional and flow-control syntax if required. But think it all out before you start coding. Decide how sophisticated you want it to be (or want it to become), and design it accordingly. Try not to let it just evolve or you'll probably end up with a mess that's not intuitive to use.