A development environment, in the words of author and professional software developer Doar, is "the whole collection of tools that people use to create software." He provides advice on how to assess the usefulness of tools and offers coverage of some of the individual tools that are available. The kinds of tools he covers are tools for tracking versions of files, build tools, bug tracking tools, and tools for creating documentation. He also offers chapters discussing the process of releasing software, environment maintenance, project communication, and some nontechnical aspects of software development environments.