Take the 2-minute tour ×  In StackExchange Podcast #09 it is
remarked:  Another study recently looked at how much effort goes
into maintaining the build system: 5 to 30% of all development
effort is spent on maintaining the build system. With the
variations being huge even when working on similar projects.
What is the name of the study referenced, and where can it be
found? The audio of the podcast contains no further details.
Additionally, does anyone have any links to other studies
covering the same topic.  share|improve this question Wow. Never
crossed my mind that a shop could spend that much time on a
build system. We have a hand-made, custom-built build system
which does nightly builds of all (20 some) release and (50 some)
development branches (if changes have been committed), starts
unit tests and stops and starts test servers (one or more per
release and one or more for many development branches), mails
results etc. Yet in the 4 years that I have been at this
employer, I don't think we have spent m