One of the criteria of the Joel Test is daily builds. The idea is that if the build is broken, whoever broke it is around to fix it up. If the build cannot be fixed, everyone will have to check out an old version and work on that. I can understand how this can be pretty bad on centralised version control where it is important to avoid merging and branching as much as possible, but this only sounds like a minor nuisance for distributed version control. Do you agree with this? Are there other reasons why daily builds are important?
How important are daily builds?
joel test;version control;builds
I think what's important to note here is that regular builds help catch errors sooner rather than later. It doesn't have to be daily, but often enough. Ideally, it can also run your unit tests.The goal is to find out when a build breaks before the final testing phase, to find them as soon as possible.Just set it up to build your main development branch(es).We use it at work (although we build hourly), and often when we forget to set-it up we find about problems just hours before releasing.