Hi All
It's been a long time between beta builds, this was mostly due to major internal design changes we had to make after some valuable feedback from beta users. We also had some staff turnover during that time which slowed us down a lot, as we had to recruit and get the new hires up to speed.
What's new in this Beta?
NOTE : You must uninstall and start fresh with this beta. Unfortunately there were just too many changes to make data migration possible for users of the earlier betas. Note that agents will also need to be updated. To ensure a smooth install, please make sure all traces of the previous beta are removed (including app.configs, web.configs etc). This should not happen again and beta's will be upgradable to the release builds.
Workspace, Repository & Artifact Rules on Stages.
Please review this page for information on how the rules work - http://wiki.finalbuilder.com/displa...ge+Options
Note that the doco on the rules is in the process of being updated and subject to change.
These rules allow you to reduce the amount of I/O that happens between the Server and the Agent, and on the Agent when the build starts, and allows filtering of repository output into the build workspace, control which files are moved between the server & agent workspaces etc. With careful use they can reduce the build times substantially. As an example, the ContinuaCI build process has gone from 12 minutes to 8 minutes.
SSH/SFTP Server
This is something that we had always planned to do, but had thought we would leave it for later. We decided to implement it sooner to help deal with authentication issues that cropped up between agents and the server. The ContinuaCI server & agent will use the server's share path when ever possible (it's faster than ssh), but will fall back to SSH/SFTP when the share is not accessable (for example when the agent is not on the domain). The SSH/SFTP server is is a custom server application written specifically for ContinuaCI, it is not usable for any other purpose (we have hardened it to the point that it will only do what ContinuaCI needs and nothing else).
New Styling
You might notice it looks a bit different, we're still tweaking the styling and trying to improve navigation, feedback and ideas are welcome. The project menu was rewritten to handle more projects and include searching.
Lots of bug fixes and minor internal changes.
What's Next
We expect to spend a few more weeks beta testing, bug fixing etc while prepare the website and store for the release.Development will continue in the mean time, working on more features etc. We still have a long list of ideas and features to implement, and we'll be pursing an agressive update cycle after the initial release. If there are any missing features you feel should be of the highest priority then please do let us know.
We'll open up the beta to any registered user on the website soon, but for now this is still a private beta, please do not share any information gained in this group until we open the beta.