Batch Scripts (MS Windows Users)

There is much on the web to teach you to code DOS batch scripts. DOS is indeed not dead. Windows 95 had its own version of DOS which has been carried into the latest versions up to Windows 7. I will provide some examples from some projects here for using DOS to automate some deployment task.

DOS can be enhanced with added commands. You may even get enhanced DOS command terminals. There used to be a color DOS which would color your terminal similar to Unix terminals. If you want to work with a unix like command terminal on windows you may use CYGWin. Though I won’t talk more about CYGWin.

This kind of thing was tried in the GUI with macros but I never found that to be useful. It was difficult to setup Windows macros to work properly. And you may click on any .bat file within the windows GUI to run it. This means that you may have a .bat file or shortcut to a .bat file on your desktop or as a menu item. If you want to try out a batch file now simply make a file with .bat file extension. Put some DOS commands in it and then type its name at the command line. Stand back and watch as multiple commands run.

You may also get some support for DOS on IRC networks in #DOS channel. There were different versions of DOS at one time. PC DOS(IBM) and Dr. DOS. Today you will probably only work with MS Windows XP shell. This is the version of DOS used from XP up to Win10

If you are familiar with DOS and you want to use DOS instead of Ant then I say go for it. I mean if its quick and easy and will save you some time, then its not wrong. Though Ant is the standard for this type of thing because Ant is (made using Java) and uses XML for the scripting. Which means it is system independent. This goes well with Java since it is also system independent. If you are not familiar with DOS I recommend you read my article on Ant and install and use that instead. If you are familiar with DOS you should convert to Ant as soon as you can.