Build grid can be constructed by installing QuickBuild agents on different machines and having them connected to QuickBuild server. Build jobs are distributed to the grid almost transparently to make QuickBuild able to build large number of projects as well as speeding up a single build. Grid nodes are self-managed and can be auto-updated to reduce management overhead to the minimum.
Scale to support massive builds simply by adding more nodes
With proper configuration, QuickBuild can shift build tasks from server to pool of agents. This makes QuickBuild able to handle large number of builds without overloading the server. More builds can be handled by adding more nodes to the grid. QuickBuild server is optimized to be able to work with hundreds of agents efficiently.
Run and test on multiple platforms
QuickBuild server and agent supports mainstream OS platforms, including windows, linux, Mac OS, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and FreeBSD, either 32bit or 64bit. By installing agents on different platforms, QuickBuild can build and test software on multiple platforms. For example, if your project contains components which need to be built and test on multiple platforms, you may configure multiple steps with each step running on a different platform to build/test corresponding components, and finally collect these build results to a single node for packaging or publishing.
Run steps of a single build parallelly on multiple nodes to accelerate build speed
A single build can be divided to multiple steps and these steps can be distributed to multiple machines to run concurrently. Files can be transferred between different nodes as desired during the build process. With proper setup, the overall build/test time can be reduced dramatically using this approach.
Flexible node selection mechanism to enable build step running on one or more compatible nodes
QuickBuild uses versatile node selection criterias to determine eligible nodes when running a build step. For example, the step can be configured to stick on particular node always, to run on least loaded node with certain attribute, to run on the node selected by parent step, or run the step on the same node as another step. These criterias can be combined freely to achieve flexibility. You can even write your own expression to determine if a node matches current step. Further, with the help of step repetition, you can easily configure a single step to run on all eligible nodes.
Auto-update agents when server is upgraded
QuickBuild agents are self-managed. Once an agent is installed on a machine, it is running there unattendedly. When upgrade to new version of QuickBuild, you only need to upgrade the server, and the agents will pick up the change from server and upgrade themselves automatically. When QuickBuild server is down, the agents try to reconnect to server periodically and once the server is up and running, agents will be reconnected automatically. You may also instruct QuickBuild to restart these agents as necessary.
