PMEase has released version 1.2 of QuickBuild, a commercial version of the open-source continuous integration server Luntbuild.
InfoQ recently asked Robin Shine of PMEase some questions about the latest release:
InfoQ: What would you say are the main improvements of QuickBuild 1.2 over 1.1?
Robin Shine: An improved JIRA plugin to handle multiple branches and promotion levels, and improved build notification (adding RSS, build event subscription and notification groups).
InfoQ: What distinguishes QuickBuild from other build/continuous integration servers?
Robin Shine: Three things:
- Build definitions can be inherited and overriden. For example, you can define general characteristics of your projects in a high level configuration, and override part of the definition (such as branch value, etc.) in low level configuration (either through redefining variables or overriding the repository/builder/step object directly).
- Built-in build promotion functionality to make builds flow among different roles in the project team, for example, Dev->QA->Release. During the promotion, source repository can be re-labeled and notifications can be sent to interesting parties.
- Variables and OGNL expressions are widely used in QuickBuild to achieve flexibility, so our customers are using QuickBuild to set up very complicated builds.
QuickBuild runs on any platform which supports Java 1.5. Developers interested in trying it out can download a 30-day trial version.
