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A neutral build is a compiled application without development software, ensuring it runs without errors on non-development systems. It can also refer to software not dependent on specific hardware or libraries. Neutral builds are created regularly to check for flaws and ensure consistent compilation and distribution.
In computer programming and computer engineering, a neutral build is an application that has been compiled from its component’s source code into a system that contains none of the tools, libraries, or other development software used to create the program. The purpose of a neutral build is to ensure that the program can run as written without errors resulting from problems with the source code that may not be seen in a development environment. The term can also refer to software that has been compiled in such a way that it does not depend on any specific hardware or proprietary libraries and, therefore, is considered development-neutral. Many programming projects create neutral builds, sometimes called nightly builds, of a project on a regular basis to ensure that, at any given time, there are no major flaws, such as missing files or conflicting configurations, in the current build process of the project. plan .
One reason for a neutral build has to do with how some software is developed. In general, the computers used to write the application have large amounts of development software installed such as integrated development environments (IDEs), programming libraries, and special hardware or other software interfaces. These development tools are sometimes integrated in a way that makes their use transparent during software development. When the software is ready to be compiled for use on a non-development system, the dependencies that the application has on the development tools must be explicitly defined so that the program can successfully compile and run on a neutral system. This is known as a neutral build.
A neutral build often takes place on a neutral computer or server, or in a neutral application space. This means that none of the development tools are present and there is no implicit integration of something special, such as a programming library, used during development. Building the program on a clean system means that the program can be compiled consistently in its current state and that the finished executable program can be distributed and run on non-development systems.
In addition to ensuring that there are no development-level dependencies, a neutral build also ensures that all of the different source code files are present and up-to-date. This can be a problem when a team is working on a project where some files are updated, some are omitted, and some are never logged as changed within the development tracking framework. A neutral build also removes the possibility of precompiled source files being reused instead of using newly compiled files, as can happen on a development system. Creating neutral builds is ultimately more about ensuring that a program can complete the build process successfully than it is about isolating logical or functional errors.
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