The Build List: Announcement
January 18th, 2009When people hear ‘The Build List’, they tend to think of one of those plain-text lists of build strings that show what people think might have come out of MS.
This build list could not be more different, yet still contain the same core purpose. The build list is simply a small client application. The actual information is stored on my server, under a new domain of mine, as an XML file. The client simply parses the XML file and displays the information as shown here. I also have an XML Schema, so that when it’s ready for public distribution, people can submit their own additions as an XML file, which can be subsequently validated against the schema. I intend to add some extra functionality over the typical build list - for example; Keys and BIOS dates for builds and possibly Screenshots or links to screenshots, again all from my server. This means that it will automatically update each time the list is refreshed. However, I’ve also added support for reading the same data from XML files on the hard drive.
Currently, the extra features are not in the Schema or Application, but what is in there, is the basic support for the information you see on the screen below, whether it’s leaked (and denotes if it’s privately leaked if there is evidence such as screenshots, or publicly leaked if the build is generally available), and now support for Modified builds, as you can see in the screenshot below. The next steps for me is probably starting work on the UI, and then bringing the features such as keys and BIOS dates.
The build list intends to not actually just be a list of builds - but integrate the entire information network about Windows Builds through the power of XML. At the moment, it uses just a single XML file, but I suspect by the end, we’ll be using multiple XML files, to minimise bandwidth usage for the user and the server, and to reduce loading times.
Currently, the only way to gain access to pre-release versions is to contact me to gain access to the invite-only Milestone 1 forums. I’ve developed this for the .NET 2.0 Framework using C# in Visual Studio 2008.
Thomas Hounsell

