You're completely right. I've done the same thing and it allowed me to separate the software developers from the build process. By separating the definitions from the build engines, I've made it so that developers can't run amok on the build targets. I also saw that same performance gains and gained some more by using the winkin utliity of Rational's clearmake. As well, the developers can concentrate on programming and not on learning a whole new build file syntax.
What you've got to remember is that most large organizations do multiple nightly automated builds. If you're only using and IDE, it is difficult to automate this process easily. If you're using make system of some kind, it's as easy as creating a cron job.
If all you are looking for is good code visualization and compilation, you might try jGRASP http://www.eng.auburn.edu/grasp It's free and it does visualization for Java, C, Objective C, C++, VHDL, and Ada. In addition, there has been the recent addition of a UML modeler.
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You're completely right. I've done the same thing and it allowed me to separate the software developers from the build process. By separating the definitions from the build engines, I've made it so that developers can't run amok on the build targets. I also saw that same performance gains and gained some more by using the winkin utliity of Rational's clearmake. As well, the developers can concentrate on programming and not on learning a whole new build file syntax.
What you've got to remember is that most large organizations do multiple nightly automated builds. If you're only using and IDE, it is difficult to automate this process easily. If you're using make system of some kind, it's as easy as creating a cron job.
If all you are looking for is good code visualization and compilation, you might try jGRASP http://www.eng.auburn.edu/grasp It's free and it does visualization for Java, C, Objective C, C++, VHDL, and Ada. In addition, there has been the recent addition of a UML modeler.