Introducing Continua CI Version 1.7 beta

This version introduces several new features, many of which have been requested by users over the past few months. These features are built upon the various improvements and bug fixes applied in revisions to version 1.6. Please don’t dismay if your requested feature is not included yet, it is still high on our to-do list. Indeed we have several other features specced out, and some partially developed in the background.

Version 1.7 Features

New Builds View dashboard

This view is useful for project administrators and shows a list of active builds across all viewable configurations. This includes running builds, queued builds and builds awaiting promotion.

New panel of indicators

Some important numbers including the total count of queued and running builds, as well as available agents and concurrent build licenses.

New Repositories tab

This is accessed via the Configurations view and shows status of each repository. We've also included “Check  Now” buttons for immediately polling each repository. You can also initiate repository checking from all existing repository pages

Project-wide and configuration versioning options.

We've added some new options in the details section of the project and configuration wizards

• Project-wide versioning: The build version number can now be incremented across many configurations within a project.
  
  
• Build number re-use: A new option at the project or configuration level to decrement the version counter when a build is discarded while initialising. e.g. due to configuration conditions. Please note that the build number will be decremented only if no other build has started in the mean time and is using a later build number.  
  
  

Improvements to Build Completed triggers.

• Variable expressions: You can now use expressions when defining variables allowing you to pass information from triggering to triggered build.
  
  
• New conditions tab: This allows you to use expressions to control whether a build is triggered
  
  

Improvements to Repository triggers.

• Trigger on specific file change types: Triggers can now be set to start only when the changeset contains certain types of file changes e.g. additions, modifications and deletions.
  
  
• Trigger file pattern: You can now specify a file pattern for repository triggers to restrict triggering only to changesets containing matching files.
  
  
• Trigger comment pattern: You can also limit triggering to changesets with specific text in the comment.
  
  

Other build features

• New force repository check option in queue build dialog allowing control over whether to recheck repository when building. There is also a default setting for each configuration
  
  
• Improvements to Stop Build buttons on dashboard view to ensure that the build stopped is always the latest build at the time when the button was clicked. Stop build dialogs also now display the build number of the build being stopped.

Actions and event handlers

• New node.js actions
  • Package management with Npm and Bower
  • Grunt and Gulp build runners
  • Unit testing with Mocha
    
    
• New build event handler for posting status updates to a Stash server
  
  
• Log Entry action now allows you to add the message as a build comment. This can be useful for showing additional build details on the build view page.
  
  
• New comments field on all actions – displayed as a tooltip in Stages editor.
  
  
• New ContinuaCI.* system environment variables are now available to all executable actions.
  
  

  ContinuaCI.AgentProperty.* ContinuaCI.Variable.* ContinuaCI.Project.Name ContinuaCI.Configuration.Name ContinuaCI.Build.Id ContinuaCI.Build.BuildNumber ContinuaCI.Build.ChangesetCount ContinuaCI.Build.ChangesetRevisions ContinuaCI.Build.ChangesetTagNames ContinuaCI.Build.ChangesetUserNames ContinuaCI.Build.Elapsed ContinuaCI.Build.HasNewChanges ContinuaCI.Build.IsFeatureBranchBuild

  ContinuaCI.Build.IssueCount ContinuaCI.Build.LatestChangeset.Created ContinuaCI.Build.LatestChangeset.IssueCount ContinuaCI.Build.LatestChangeset.RepositoryName ContinuaCI.Build.LatestChangeset.Revision ContinuaCI.Build.LatestChangeset.TagCount ContinuaCI.Build.LatestChangeset.UserName ContinuaCI.Build.Started ContinuaCI.Build.StartedBy ContinuaCI.Build.TimeOnQueue ContinuaCI.Build.UsesDefaultBranch ContinuaCI.Build.Version

  
  
  
• Execute Program, DOS Command and PowerShell actions now include an option to generate a context XML file. This file contains details of the build including repositories, changesets and files for you to parse with your own script or program.

Git repositories

• Case-only renames are now recorded in the repository cache.
  
  
• New option to list author instead of committer as changeset username

Version 1.7 beta is ready for you to download and install. All feedback is welcome!