As to build tools, I've been proseltyzed by the developer of
/Briefcase and it seems to be reasonably encompassing.  

The obligatory link to the mother of all lists:

http://www.iac.honeywell.com/Pub/Tech/CM/CMTools.html


\_ Don't waste your money trying to automate testing.

I'd like to counter that.  I've designed things that were large enough
that having me test it by hand would have been long and error prone.
Or through clever automation, I can run ~100 tests in a few minutes
while I go get coffee, including tests for good and bad results.  

It may depend on your focus though as to whether the time investment
in automation is worth it.  If you're in GUI land, that could be
arbitrarily difficult.

I can say it was very reassuring to type 'make test' after some code
change and watch it complete...or pinpoint an error.

David