IM Build Status

Here's a clever idea. Apple just posted an ad/white paper on their dev website about how QuickBooks Pro was converted from a Carbon application to a half Carbon/half Cocoa application. Congrats to the QuickBooks devs! Here's the fun part:

Building An Application With iChat The list of Mac-only benefits in QuickBooks for Mac goes on. Here’s a final example: have you ever considered using iChat in your build process? Probably not. But the team creating QuickBooks for Mac did, and they’ve found it to be a useful tool. Here’s what they do. The build server is on the iChat buddy list for the team. An AppleScript process on the server checks for incoming iChat messages. When someone on the team sends a message (any message - “Hey there!”), the server automatically starts the build. The server then uses iChat status messages to reflect the status of the build—in process, complete, and so on. The team can easily keep track of what’s going wherever they are—in a meeting, in a cubicle, or in the Intuit cafeteria.

Using IM to communicate group wide build robot status. Now why didn't I think of that? Maybe there is a place for a scriptable IM client...