TeamCity Blog

TeamCity 3.1 release is coming. And as we already stated, the release is targeted on the current features maintenance and critical bugfixes but we have also implemented some new features helping you to be more productive with your continuous integration process. Among the feature highlights we would like to name the following:

• New visual metrics for estimating the Build Agents workload and showing the time to fix the failed build tests
• Support for NAnt 0.86 Beta 1 testing framework
• NUnit 2.4 support
• Possibility to specify the mode (x86 or x64) to run the NUnit tests
• NUnit tests categories support for NAnt, MSBuild, and NUnit Launcher
• Reporting tests via standard output enabling smooth integration with unit tests
• Publishing build artifacts while the build is still running. As soon as the build produces a new artifact, it becomes visible and available for download and use in multiple places of TeamCity user interface
• Smarter notifications allowing to be aware on the first failed build after successful
  on the first successful build after failed and all company’s projects status
• Build Queue reordering is now available right on the Projects page
• Find the builds created on particular Build Agents and filter the builds history builds of particular build configuration typing a part of the agent name
• Filtering the code duplicates and inspections results by directories for better navigation in discovered issues
• Code duplicates are not dull looking any more as the syntax is now highlighted
• Improved cleanup options for saving the server disk space
• and many other fixes, polished user interface and improved performance

Download TeamCity 3.1 Release Candidate.

More technical details on this release improvements are available in TeamCity Reference. And as usual we want to ask you to backup your data before upgrading to a new version.

Wish you happy building!
The JetBrains TeamCity team

Technorati tags: TeamCity, pre-tested commit, JetBrains, IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, continuous integration, build management, agile development, MS Visual Studio 2005, MS Visual Studio 2008

… is available for download.

This release is mainly about bugfixes but also brings the improved external database support, in particular:

• support for Oracle as an external database
• database migration tool now provides migration in any direction

We appreciate you for your feedback, urge you to read the backup instructions before the upgrade and wish you a happy building!

Technorati tags: TeamCity, JetBrains, EAP, IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, continuous integration, build management, agile development, MS Visual Studio 2005, MS Visual Studio 2008

As soon as you have implemented continuous building and testing practice in your company, TeamCity starts accumulating the building process’ data such as developers’ code modifications, artifacts and so on. To help you get rid of redundant data and keep server disk space reasonable, we have a clean-up policy for the projects and build configurations.

A clean-up policy is in fact a set of rules which defines which data will be removed and from particular builds. It includes:

• a number of successful builds of the particular build configuration to be kept,
• builds’ data to be removed from history,
• a time period the builds to be preserved in history.

You can also specify the so-called default rule which will be applied to all configurations and projects and override it with more appropriate rule in specific configurations. To keep some build away from the cleanup process you can use the pin build feature.

To set the clean-up policy, navigate to Administration and click the link:

On the page that opens, click the Add clean-up rule button and select the build configuration for which you want to apply the rule:

Then you can specify:

• the data to be removed (available since the last TC 3.1 EAP build),
• the types of builds the rule will be applied to.

In TeamCity 3.0 both the build and its artifacts were removed from history. Now you can choose between three new options and specify the data to be cleaned for each build configuration more precisely:

• remove artifacts only (keep history and statistics)
• remove build from history but keep statistics (build will still be shown on the TeamCity statistical charts but you won’t be able to browse build results)
• remove everything

Use two other options to specify the age of the builds the rule is going to be applied to and the number of successful builds to be kept in history. If you can select both options, and the builds meeting both conditions will be cleaned.

We are sure this feature will allow you to optimize the server space usage on a long run.

Technorati tags: TeamCity, JetBrains, Java, clean-up, .NET, IntelliJ IDEA, continuous integration, build management, agile development, best practices, MS Visual Studio 2003, Eclipse

Good news! TeamCity 3.1 is going to be released really soon and meanwhile we have prepated a new EAP build with a number of new features and interface improvements:

• Build Agents’ Workload Statistics. To enable a better control on TeamCity’s Build Agents’ workload, we have introduced visualizing their load during the specified time period.
• More .Net Tools Support: Now NAnt 0.86 runner and NUnit 2.4 testing framework are supported, and you can specify in the mode (x86 or x64) to run NUnit tests.
• New notification options: receive notifications only when the build status changes selecting “Limit to only the first successful build after failed” and “Limit to only the first failed build after successful” options when setting up your notifications:



• Sending service messages via standard output. As TeamCity reports tests on-the-fly while the builds are still running (and not all tests are complete), each testing framework needs its own support for the feature. In TeamCity 3.1 we are going to introduce an easy way to report running tests information: just print a pre-formatted message to the standard output of the build process so that TeamCity is aware of the test.
• “During-the-build” artifacts publishing is another tasty feature of service messages.
• UI Enhancements:
• All projects popup available from every page
• Access to queued build estimate right from the overview page
• Enhanced External Database Support. Database migration tool now supports any direction migration. Initial support for Oracle is implemented. Please try on as-is basis.
• Other Improvements:
• Build working directory setting
• 3 levels of Builds History clean-up (artifacts, history, statistics)
• Agent filter on build history
• Quick search of the build on specific agent
• Ability to watch all projects
• TLS support for e-mail sending
• Build scheduling with CRON-like expressions
• “Tests time to fix” statistics
• Syntax highlighting in duplicates viewer
• Basic support for reporting tests running in parallel (parallel ant task or TestNG)
• “View Agent Details” permission (by default the permission is set for the Project Developer, Project Administrator, Agent manager, and System administrator roles). In TeamCity Enterprise, Windows domain authentication is now available on Linux computers.
• Duplicates and inspections browser now allows to browse results filtered by directories

View more detailed release notes and download the latest build.

And, as usually, we urge you to perform your data backup before upgrade and eagerly wait for your feedback!

Technorati tags: TeamCity, JetBrains, Java, .NET, IntelliJ IDEA, continuous integration, build management, agile development, best practices, MS Visual Studio 2003, Eclipse

In TeamCity 3.1 we are going to provide more visual metrics, namely, statistics for TeamCity’s Build Agents’ activity and their usage during a particular period of time.

Click the Agents tab and then go to the Agent Statistics tab to get an overview of the Agents’ workload:

When you mouse over the fancy-looking stripes, you can see the builds-related info such as their number, duration, and results in a popup.

Of course, the page view is customizable and you can specify the time range and sort the Build Agents display by their name and workload.

We hope you’ll find this feature helpful in:

• your daily administration activities for leveraging your company’s Build Grid
• bridging the gap between the most frequently used computers and those which are often idle and, finally,
• lowering the cost of your hardware resources ownership.

Technorati tags: TeamCity, JetBrains, , Build Grid, , Build Agent, IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, continuous integration, build management, agile development, MS Visual Studio 2005, MS Visual Studio 2008

Even though the software development team many comprise of highly-motivated professionals, they can still introduce inconsistencies in their code, and both the builds and the project code base can break from time to time. When it happens, it may take a while to figure out what the problem is and whose code is the cause of the build failure. Precious time is lost while trying to find out what is wrong. The team members can also assume someone else is on top of things but in reality nothing is done.

TeamCity’s take responsibility feature can help in such situations. When a build fails and the team members don’t take any actions, it is visible on TeamCity’s web interface, and team members can be notified on the fact setting up flexible notification rules.
A developer who broke the build can take responsibility either on the web and from within the IDE:

As soon as the fix is done, TeamCity automatically informs on that.

If the developer discovers that his code is OK and it’s somebody else’s fault, he or she can give up the responsibility and, again, the fact becomes evident to others. As soon as someone else states that it’s his fault, the team is notified on that via different notification means:

A result? Face-to-face communication but the team organizes itself, and nobody from the outside dictates what to do. Moreover, you get rid of the “broken window” syndrome, and the builds’ problems are not your team’s morale breakers anymore.

Technorati tags: TeamCity, JetBrains, IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, continuous integration, build management, agile development, MS Visual Studio 2005, MS Visual Studio 2008