Advantages of a build server?

Question

I am attempting to convince my colleagues to start using a build server and automated building for our Silverlight application. I have justified it on the grounds that we will catch integration errors more quickly, and will also always have a working dev copy of the system with the latest changes. But some still don't get it.

What are the most significant advantages of using a Build Server for your project?

Answer 1

There are more advantages than just finding compile errors earlier (which is significant):

• Produce a full clean build for each check-in (or daily or however it's configured)
• Produce consistent builds that are less likely to have just worked due to left-over artifacts from a previous build
• Provide a history of which change actually broke a build
• Provide a good mechanism for automating other related processes (like deploy to test computers)