QuickBuild

QuickBuild is a commercial and cross-platform build automation and management server, which helps continuous integration or nightly builds.

QuickBuild aims at being an enterprise level, yet easy to use build server.
Configuration, monitoring, and access to build artifacts are all done through an intuitive web interface.

What is new in this release:

• This version verifies GitHub pull requests and updates pull request status based on build results, integrates the GitHub issue tracker to parse GitHub issues in commit messages, leverages the perforce shelve feature to run pre-commit builds without using a user agent, retrieves changes of Subversion externals, adds custom build and request columns, displays the reason for waiting steps, uses environment variables in composite steps for inheritance and overridden, allows drag-and-drop to organize favorite dashboards, provides resource access information to know about resource usage status, and adds coverity report rendering.

What is new in version 5.0:

• This version launches the build agent on demand into Amazon EC2.
• A build pipeline to visualize the commits lifecycle across different build and deployment stages.
• Optionally stores artifacts of configuration sub tree to specified build agents to reduce server load.
• Grid and server metric collection and trending.
• Alert definition and notification for key performance indicators.

What is new in version 4.0:

• A customizable dashboard was provided for users and groups to organize build information via gadgets.
• Report aggregation provides a build metrics summary of descendant configurations.
• Resource management was implemented for better control of build distribution and agent load.
• A grid partition divides grid nodes between different configuration trees.
• User activity auditing was added for tracking and reviewing every modification to the system.
• CollabNet TeamForge, Redmine, Google Repo, and Boost tests were integrated.
• The report system was redesigned for improved user experience and performance.

What is new in version 3.1:

• DVCS (distributed version control system) integration was added, including Git, Mercurial, and Bazaar.
• A gated push feature was added to run verification builds against ready-to-push changes on the server before sending them to the official DVCS repository.
• .NET support was enhanced with Team Foundation Server, MSBuild, and Visual Studio solution builder integration.

What is new in version 3.0:

• Issue Tracker Integration:
• Now, QuickBuild integrates tightly with popular issue tracking systems to transform issue keys in SCM commit messages into issue links, create/assign issues under certain conditions during build, auto-update issue status based on issue actions in SCM commit messages. An issue panel also exists to display all resolved and related issues of a build. Currently JIRA, Trac and Bugzilla are supported.
• Build versions can be managed either at issue tracker side, or at QuickBuild side. To manage at issue tracker side, you may instruct QuickBuild to use next unreleased version in your issue tracker as next build version, and mark it as released after the build completes successfully. On the other hand, QuickBuild can create new version in your issue tracker and mark it as released if versions are managed at QuickBuild side.
• A QuickBuild plugin is also available at JIRA side to display related builds and SCM changes of an issue, or recent builds of a JIRA project.
• Dashboard to Display Summary Information of a Configuration:
• A configuration specific dashboard to display brief information of a configuration, including description, next build version, overall build success rate, average build duration, error messages, recent builds, and pending build requests.
• Step Duration and Success Rate Statistics:
• Trends of duration and success rate of each executed steps are now available in statistics tab of a configuration. You can even compare these trends between different steps to find out which step fails the most and which step costs the most time.
• Search Changes in Build History:
• SCM changes screen is reworked to support text search in changes between two arbitrary builds.
• Terminate Spawned Build Processes Reliably:
• QuickBuild can now terminate spawned build processes immediately and reliably when a build is canceled or timed out. You no longer need to manually kill relevant processes to release workspace mutexes. This works on Windows, Linux and Unix platforms.
• Repeated Execution of Steps:
• Step can be repeated for different set of parameters, either parallelly, or sequentially. For example, you may create a singe test step to have it execute for each combination of possible databases and OS platforms, or have it run on all applicable build agents. This can greatly reduce number of steps needed in a complex build workflow.
• Step Drag and Drop:
• Build workflow can now be created/rearranged by dragging and dropping steps.
• Visibility of Inherited Settings:
• Inherited settings such as steps, repositories and variables will be displayed directly in descendant configurations. This makes examination and modification of inherited settings much easier.
• Multiple Promote Actions with Permission Control:
• Multiple promote actions can be defined with the ability to customize the condition of each action. For example, you may define a release action and have it appear only when build is recommended and current user belongs to release manager group.
• Defined promote actions will appear as buttons on build page conditionally based on current build status and user permission.
• Other Improvements:
• A non-admin account can now be authorized to administer a configuration subtree.
• A general commit message transformer to transform arbitrary snippet of SCM commit message freely. This feature is typically used to transform issue keys into issue links for issue trackers currently not supported by QuickBuild.
• The same step can now be reused in different composition steps.
• Dependency builds triggered by QuickBuild repository or trigger build step can now respect queue settings.
• Be able to add description for a build.
• Be able to configure QuickBuild server or agent to bind to specific network interface via "bin/config.(bat|sh)".
• Add the option of auto-detecting user time zone from browser to display local date/time. This option resides in my setting page.
• Be able to configure performance factor of grid node via "bin/config.(bat|sh)".
• Promotion now takes variables defined in destination configuration into consideration and will prompt for them if necessary.
• A build variables tab to display value of all used variables in a build.
• Add option to clear passwords when backup database. This is useful when sending backup for diagnostics.
• Tray monitor is improved to reflect build status in tray icon.
• RESTful API is redesigned to be fast and stable.

What is new in version 2.1:

• QuickBuild 2.1 is just released with plugin and RESTful API, a cross-platform tray monitor, FxCop&NCover support, custom statistics, Oracle and SSL support, and much more.

What is new in version 2.0:

• The most important features introduced in this version are the pre-commit test, advanced build grid, versatile build reports, graphical build workflow design, visual build promotion, source code view/diff, and build comparison.
• QuickBuild 2.0 also includes enormous improvements such as an intuitive user interface, fine-grained permission control, real time build progress and log monitoring, and variable prompting.