Yeah the process takes time and working out the kinks to find the things that work for you is not always as obvious as it would seem.

I use PRG files for complete build process to go directly from EXE to packaged deployable including installer so a distributable build is usually one click - maybe one click and one version update in the installer package away. Same goes for checkins. I still use Christof's TwoFox stuff and I have a simple SCC.PRG that I call before every checkin. And SCC.PRG .t. (or whatever) after a checkout to recreate the binaries and that works well. I don't mind the extra step especially since most of my projects don't include any binary files that change (all Web Connection work happens in PRG files unless you choose to explicitly use vcx classes).

But... the end result is very satisfying and it also saves a ton of time over the long haul as the build process and deployment creation is automated. Not only that but you can also see exactly what needs to happen which is self-documenting.

Most of this is pretty obvious, yet I didn't really have this process in place - especially for Fox projects until a couple of years ago.

+++ Rick ---

>>The problem with all of this is that it's not super stable. if files are open things can be locked etc. which is a bitch. Using project hooks are a good way around this but I don't use projects much except for final builds so that doesn't really work for me.
>>
>>Ultimately you want to have a Build routine that can put your project into a stable commit state. This can be a PRG that clears and closes everything then creates the text files.
>
>I sometimes work in a setup where dev is responsible for checkin, and from there a dedicated build VM does a checkout of changed files into the VM project directory and attempts to build there in continuos integration manner, showing success/failure for each part in a simple red/green GUI if any failures crop up.
>Clearly Build process is unhampered and in case of failure offending part is easy to find in most of the cases. Took some tweaking to set up even after german devcon session, but was/is worth it even for 2-4 devs working in parallell.