While Xoreax's IncrediBuild started life as a build automation tool, it has since evolved into a general framework for automating Windows-based processes. In the latest release, IncrediBuild can also invoke such processes across grid nodes, speeding up the execution of processes that can run in parallel.

For most build tasks, IncrediBuild offers integration with Microsoft's Visual Studio tool: build processes can be initiated and managed from within Visual Studio, and distributed on grid nodes for faster execution.

For parallel build execution, the latest version of IncrediBuild features a grid engine. That engine, in turn, works with grid nodes that can be configured on a local network. Each grid node has a grid agent that communicates with the grid engine about its portion of the build task.

If a build task is parallelized, each portion of the parallel execution has to typically to execute in identical environments. To that end, IncrediBuild supports virtualization technologies that can render grid nodes identical from a build task's point of view.

IncrediBuild 3.x generalizes the grid-based build execution model to also allow any Windows-based task to run on a grid, such as such as make-based builds, data builds, simulations, testing scripts and more.

What do you think about grid-based builds? Do you think that distributed builds can make developers more productive?