QuickBuild provides an easy and flexible way to set up builds. You may define arbitrary steps visually and arrange them executing either sequentially, or parallelly on selected nodes. When manage builds for many projects, QuickBuild's ability to inherit and override build definitions makes the job incredibly easy. With the help of scripting and variables, QuickBuild is able to address almost all kind of build scenarios.
Organize projects hierarchically for easy management and navigation
Projects and configurations are organized in a tree structure. Operations against a high level tree node can be applied to all child nodes if necessary. For example, you may subscribe to high level tree nodes to get build notifications of all child projects.
Design complex build workflow visually
Build workflow can be designed visually through QuickBuild's web interface. You may arrange steps to execute concurrently or sequentially, change step execution order, insert/remove steps, or override step definitions from parent configurations. Steps can be configured to run when certain conditions are satisfied, and on grid nodes satisfying specified conditions. When build is running, the designed workflow will be displayed with step execution status to provide a straightforward view of build progress.
Reuse build workflows between projects through inheritance and achieve workflow diversity by using variables
Common build workflows can be defined in high level tree node, and low level nodes will be able to access these workflows and optionally reuse them in a bigger workflow. Assume you need to set up builds for multiple branches. You may define a project level configuration first to hold build workflow definitions with branch parameterized as a variable. And then add separate configuration for each branch just to override the branch variable. You do not need to repeat the workflow definition in these branch configurations and will save a lot of work.
Transitive build dependency support and artifacts resolving
Cross-project dependencies can be configured in QuickBuild. Dependency artifacts can be resolved and retrieved when a project using that dependency is being built. Artifacts can be configured to fetch from desired build of dependency project, including latest recommended build, latest successful build, and build of specified version. During the process of artifact resolving, QuickBuild also supports to trigger the dependency project to generate new dependency build if changes are detected.
Parameterized manual builds
It is often desired to specify certain build parameters when manually triggers a build. For example, release engineers may want to specify the build version at the time of releasing, and developer may want to specify whether or not to run a certain set of tests when requesting proof builds.
With the help of variables, QuickBuild can be configured to run scheduled builds with default parameters, and prompt for user input for these parameters when the build is triggered manually. Build parameters can be prompted in a variety of ways, including text input, password input, check boxes, and selection boxes. Input values of prompted parameters will be saved for current user and will be displayed as default value when the build is manually triggered next time by the same user. This parameterization also applies when a build is promoted.
