Patent ID: 8856752

Claim:
A method of monitoring development asset state to determine if development assets are out of date comprising: initializing an asset state indicator on a computer to a single initialization value indicating that each of a plurality of development assets of a build process are up to date, in response to a known up to date state of all the development assets, wherein a collection of targets for the build process, a collection of development assets that comprise inputs and outputs to each of the targets in the collection of targets and a collection of dependencies between targets in the collection of targets are provided, from which an execution sequence for an operation of the build process based on the target dependencies is generated, wherein each target in the execution sequence groups build actions together in a particular order and provides an entry point into the execution sequence for the operation of the build process; monitoring each of the plurality of development assets for changes between build requests; returning a single current value of the asset state indicator in response to detecting a build request, the single current value indicating whether any of the plurality of development assets are out of date; bypassing an individual up to date status evaluation of any of the plurality of development assets if the single current value of the asset state indicator is equivalent to the single initialization value, the bypassing facilitating an instantaneous determination that the build request does not require a corresponding build; and enabling an operation of a partial build process if the single current value of the asset state indicator is different than the single initialization value, wherein a modification of the single initialization value indicates that at least one of the plurality of development assets is not up to date, the partial build process limiting target executions to a set of affected targets prior to an initial execution of the execution sequence.