Michael Hill offers one of the best analogies I've seen for those builds that always require a bit of hand-holding:

What’s a handle-jiggle? It’s anything in a build sequence that requires thought–effort, even–from the developer doing the build. If a file needs to be deleted before a build, make the build system delete. If you first have to download and install those two special libraries, make the build system install them. If you have to figure out what files are changed before a merge, make some software that does that.

Worth the read.

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Posted by Jeffery Fredrick on August 9, 2009 6:12:00 PM EDT#