Automated Build Studio 5 - Top Reasons to Upgrade

Automated Build Studio version 5 includes a lot of new features, operations and improvements, all designed to help you automate your builds and everyday tasks more efficiently. For a complete list of changes, see the New Features List. We would like to highlight the top twelve major reasons to upgrade to version 5.

1. Create Common Submacro Libraries

In version 5, you can create submacro libraries that perform common tasks, such as error handling, notification sending, report generation, and others. This means that you no longer need to copy and paste common submacros! Instead, you can place the desired submacros into a library and call them from external macros via a single Run Library Submacro operation.

Other than providing an easy way to reuse common submacros, libraries make maintenance a lot simpler. You can also share your libraries with other team members and work on them together.

2. Organize Macro Flow Using Operation Dependencies

Automated Build Studio 5 introduces a new way to organize the macro execution flow. Instead of arranging operation groups in their execution order, you can now specify dependencies between different operation groups. Build Studio analyzes these dependencies and executes the macro operations in a corresponding order and, where possible, automatically running operations in parallel. By using this approach, you can easily add new operation blocks to your macros without having to re-arrange the operations — you only need to update the dependencies!

Those who have ever used the make tools to build their applications will find dependencies between macro operations similar to the targets’ dependencies in makefiles.

3. Request Builds on the Build Server

With Automated Build Studio’s Web Interface, the users can now request builds instead of directly running them. This enables the users who are not authorized to trigger builds on demand. To process the requests, you can set up special build triggers that will run the build macro after a certain amount of time since the latest request, after a certain number of requests have been received or under other conditions.

All build requests submitted by the users are displayed in Build Studio’s Web Interface, where you can monitor the requests, manage them and see which requests triggered which builds.

4. Easily Manage Virtual Machines from Macros

Version 5 has new Microsoft Virtual PC, VMWare Server and VMWare Workstation operation categories to help automate management of virtual machines hosted by the corresponding virtualization systems. You can now easily manage these virtual machines directly from Build Studio macros: start, pause, resume and stop virtual machines, check their state, enumerate through available virtual machines, and perform many other actions, all as a part of your software build or test process!

5. Create Local Macro Variables

Automated Build Studio 5 allows you to define local variables inside submacros or individual operation groups. These variables will only be “visible” inside that submacro or group, and will not be available in the outer scope, where they are of no use. Local variables are especially useful if your macros utilize a large number of variables: by defining some of them as local relative to individual submacros or operation groups, you can simplify the maintenance process.

6. See Which User Started the Build

Automated Build Studio’s Client panel is the place where you monitor and control activities on remote build servers. In addition to other useful information, it now lets you know how the build was started: manually by the user, by the scheduler, a continuous integration trigger or by build requests. In case the build was triggered by the user, the Client displays the name of this user. This helps you ensure that all builds are run by the appropriate users. Screenshot

Of course, the same improvement has also been applied to Build Studio’s Web Interface and Windows Vista gadget.

7. Run Macros on Remote Computers Under Interactive Desktop

The Remote Macro Execution operations now has the option to run macro operations on remote computers under interactive desktop. With this option turned on, the remote instance of Automated Build Studio (or Automated Macro Player) as well as the third-party tools used in the macro are all launched in interactive mode. This enables the interactive operations, such as operations that run GUI tests or require the remote user’s input, to be successfully executed on the remote computers.

8. Build Projects Created in CodeGear RAD Studio 2009

Automated Build Studio 5 introduces comprehensive support for CodeGear RAD Studio 2009 compilers. Now, you can easily automate the building of your Delphi 2009, C++Builder 2009 and C# 2009 projects and project groups with Automated Build Studio macros.

9. Secure Connections to E-Mail, News & FTP Servers

The e-mail, news and FTP operations can now establish secure connections to the servers using SSL and TSL protocols. You can choose the security mode to be used, specify digital certificates to be used for the server and client authentication and other security settings. This way, you can ensure the privacy of Internet data transfers done by your build macros.

10. Develop Custom Automated Build Studio Clients

Automated Build Studio 5 includes an ActiveX control that lets you develop custom applications for controlling remote build servers. This control lets you connect to the build server from your application, lists all registered macros, checks the macro status, runs, pauses, resumes and stops macros, as well as retrieve the history of macro runs.

11. Receive Automatic Notifications from the Build Server

Automated Build Studio Server can now automatically broadcast build notifications via e-mail, MSN (Windows Messenger, MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger) or ICQ. Each build macro has its own notification scheme, where you specify which users will be notified, of which events, and via which medium. Your team can now be instantly informed about started, finished and failed builds and thus fix broken builds quickly. More…

12. Use New Operations to Automate Various Tasks

Besides the mentioned improvements, Automated Build Studio 5 includes over 100 new operations that make it easier for you to automate repetitive tasks. The new operations provide support for:

• MySQL Server
• ZLib
• 7-Zip
• Fast-Help
• Setup Factory
• SetupBuilder
• ExpertInstall
• Doc-To-Help
• HelpScribble
• MSIStudio
• MSI Factory
• HelpStudio
• Xenocode Postbuild
• Microsoft Source Server
• String manipulations
• XML files manipulations
• Disk mapping
• And much more!