I’d test little things with a unit test. One step up, I'd make a local test environment. Beyond that, I’d create a "deploy" target in my makefile, which does an

I’d test little things with a unit test. One step up, I'd make a local test environment. Beyond that, I’d create a "deploy" target in my makefile, which does an efficient installation to your target (you don't specify what you're building, but that target may be a test server, a mobile device, an embedded board I dunno).