Parabuild

Viewtier Systems, Inc. - http://www.viewtier.com

Viewtier Parabuild

Parabuild is a powerful automated build management server developed by Viewtier Systems. Parabuild helps software teams and organizations of all sizes reduce risks of project failures, save money, and increase productivity. With Parabuild you build with pleasure!

Parabuild Features

Simple installation. A typical installation takes less than three minutes. The time consumed until the first build run is under 15 minutes if your build configuration does not require installation of additional software on the build server.
Low to zero administration overhead. After Parabuild is installed, the only administrative task that needs to be performed is periodical backups. All build and user management is done remotely through Web UI. With Parabuild need to open a shell at the build server is rare.
Easy to use Web user interface (UI). Parabuild offers intuitive Web UI for access to builds statuses, logs, results, and release notes.
Dashboard and detailed views of builds statuses. Dashboard view offers the "bird eye" view of statuses of all configured builds that is convenient for the see-you-all type of monitoring. Detailed view allows close monitoring of a selected build and provides online information about the build status, last build run result, last clean run result, and changes in the current or last build run.
Multiple builds per server. Parabuild allows to configure running multiple builds at a single Parabuild instance, including builds running at remote build boxes .
Automatic builds. Also known as integration builds, automatic builds ensure that new changes do not break the project code base. Parabuild starts automatic builds at every check-in or a group of check-ins. Parabuild reports build results through e-mail and instant messaging (IM).
Stable scheduled builds. Scheduled builds run at configured time. With Parabuild scheduled builds are always stable - they do not break even if the current code base is broken. Scheduled builds are a perfect fit for running nightly, daily, or QA builds.
Remote multi-platform builds. Parabuild supports running builds on remote build boxes. Build manager and remote builders can run on different platforms. Windows, Cygwin, Linux, Solaris, HP UX and generic Unix, including Mac OS X, are supported. Parabuild maintains the access to build administration, statuses, logs and results from a single build management server even if a build run remotely.
Multi-step builds. Build configurations can define one or more build steps. Each build step may have its own build script, success and failure patterns, and a timeout.
Build scripting tools independence. Parabuild will build any project that can be built from a command line - shell scripts, Perl, make, nmake, ANT, nANT, Maven, Jam, VB - you name it.
Advanced build failure detection. Parabuild detects build failures by inspecting the error code returned by a build script and/or by finding configured textual failure patterns in build logs.
Build timeout control. Parabuild allows setting a build timeout per a build step.
Build labeling/tagging. If configured, Parabuild labels successful builds according to configured label name patterns.
Version control integration. Parabuild supports the growing number of version control systems (VCS). ClearCase, Perforce, Visual Source Safe, Surround SCM, CVS, Subversion are currently supported. Integration with other VCS currently is under development. Smart synthetic change lists for CVS are supported to allow painless integration of changes.
Multi-line VCS repository paths. Parabuild supports projects requiring multiple VCS depot paths.
Issue/bug tracking integration. Parabuild offers automatic fetching of release notes for scheduled builds from growing number of supported issue/bug tracking systems. Jira, Bugzilla and Perforce jobs are currently supported.
Build log archive. Parabuild allows to configure the archiving of selected build logs. Archived build logs are available for online viewing. Parabuild supports the following log types: single-file text and html, directories with text files, full-blown html logs with directories and images and growing number of specialized log types currently including output from JUnit, PMD, and findbugs.
Build results archive. Parabuild offers built-in archive of build results (artifacts). Archived build results are available for download upon build step completion. Supported result types are single files and directories.
Automatic archive compression. To reduce space occupied by the log archive, Parabuild automatically compresses logs according to a configurable number of days. Deletion of logs and results is performed as according to the build administrator's request.
Build results notification. Parabuild provides e-mail and instant messaging (IM) notifications about build results to build participants and optionally to other members of the team. XMPP (Jabber) IM is supported. Parabuild supports using e-mails configured in VCS.
Group based security. When needed, Parabuild allows to limit access to build statuses, results, and logs to groups of users.
Build results search. Parabuild allows to search text and HTML logs, change lists and builds results.
System stability monitoring. Parabuild offers immediate notification to build administrator about various infrastructure errors such as unavailability of external resources, runtime configuration, system errors, etc., so that immediate actions can be taken to fix the problems.

Parabuild Benefits

Running Parabuild as a part of software configuration management (SCM) infrastructure benefits virtually every member of any software organization including release engineers, software developers, remote and offshore teams, QA, VP of Engineering and CTO.

Benefits For Release Engineers

Parabuild assumes the burden of creating a stable build automation infrastructure and allows build and release engineers to concentrate on the challenging task of creating effective software build process.
Parabuild is easy to install and administer. A typical Parabuild installation takes less than three minutes. Adding a new build under the control of Parabuild server usually takes about 15 minutes or less. All build and user management is performed through comprehensive Web UI.
Parabuild does not impose any limitations to used build scripting tools. Our server will build any project that can be built from a command line.
With Parabuild QA, nightly and daily builds never break as a result of a broken source base.

Benefits For Software Developers

Parabuild ensures that the changes build cleanly by automatically building new changes submitted to the version control system (VCS).
Parabuild allows to take immediate action to fix broken builds by immediately notifying owners of changes that break the build. Other members of the team can also be notified to increase awareness about the build damage.
Parabuild has a simple, convenient and easy-to-use Web UI to access build statuses, logs and results.
Parabuild is attractive to XP and Agile teams with its automatic builds performing continuous integration.
Parabuild improves team morale by reducing chances of checking out broken code to zero. With Parabuild the panic of "I cannot build the latest" is gone; online, up-to-date information about time stamps and change list numbers of last clean builds is provided to use in case the latest build is broken.

Benefits For Distributed Teams

Distributed teams using Parabuild enjoy significant time saving advantages. Time zone differences between distributed teams often reach twelve hours and even more. In such environments changes that break the code base can paralyze the development for up to 24 hours. Parabuild solves this problem by offering automatic integration builds. Automatic builds provide notification if new changes break the code base thus giving a chance to fix the breakage immediately. Even if the code base is broken, Parabuild supplies information about its last clean state so that everyone can check out latest clean code and continue working.

Benefits for QA

With Parabuild QA teams never run idle because of the failure of the nightly build. Parabuild delivers stable scheduled builds that do not break even if the current code base is broken.
QA teams are provided release notes that Parabuild automatically fetches from bug/issue tracking systems.

Benefits for VP of Engineering and CTO

Most of the software projects fail because they miss deadlines, cannot stay in budget, or are unable to meet the requirements. Parabuild reduces risks of such project failures:

Parabuild helps to keep the schedule by eliminating significant time losses resulting from breakage of the code base. From the experiences of our customers, we can infer that a single code base breakage that is not immediately identified can cause a loss of about one man-hour per every member of the development and QA teams. Parabuild solves this problem with automatic integration and stable QA builds.
Parabuild helps to stay in the budget. Code base breakage may cause an increase in the budget costs to compensate for loss of productivity. Parabuild reduces and oftentimes eliminates such loss of productivity.
Parabuild reduces the turnover of staff. Parabuild increases team morale and helps to maintain capable engineers on board by assuring that the code the engineers check out does not break.
Parabuild shortens the time to market. Parabuild allows to reduce development time and hit the market before competitors.
Parabuild offers quick payback and high ROI. Depending on the size of the team, Parabuild pays for itself in the period of one to ten days.