TeamCity Dev Blog

TeamCity 7.0 EAP build 21075: Enhanced Dependencies Graph and Remote Settings Editing

2012-01-23T19:48:00.000+04:00

As we are targeting TeamCity 7.0 release in about a month, this is the last EAP build with new features. We will focus on bug fixes and minor improvements to existing functionality until the release.

That is why it is important for us to get your feedback on this TeamCity build to be able to fix possible issues before the release.

This build further improves build dependencies visualization. To summarize, you get "Dependencies" tab for a build (listing all the build chains that include the build) and also for a build configuration (listing all the chains that include the builds of the build configuration). You can also "continue" a chain from the current state.
"Build chain" are all the builds interlinked with snapshot dependencies. This is a TeamCity notion that embraces build "pipeline". If you feel the need to get "pipelines" in TeamCity, this is the feature to try and give us your feedback.

Another long-awaited feature is to allow remote build configuration creation/modification. The functionality is now part of REST API. With it you can create new empty build configurations or copy existing ones as well as change individual settings like add a new build step / trigger / agent requirement. If you plan to use the feature you are highly welcome to try it and let us know how well it fulfills your needs. REST API is still scarcely documented, but you can get supported requests description via http://<your server>/app/rest/application.wadl request, which also has links to .xsd of the used entities.

Now it's time to browse through the release notes or full list of fixed issues, download and try it as a test installation.

You are welcome to share your feedback in the forum or by other means.

TeamCity 7.0 EAP build 20939: Restructured Admin Space, Changes Across Dependencies and More

2012-01-03T20:32:00.000+04:00

With a bit of delay, here is an announcement of the recent TeamCity EAP build that the team published while I was spending last week of the year on a skiing holiday.

There are lots of new features both related to UI and logic. Please browse through the release notes to find those of interest to you. To get the details you are welcome to look through the fixed issues list.

We would appreciate if you try some of the features on a test installation of your server and let us know how well the features address your case and your opinion on UI changes.

If you use snapshot dependencies (which you really should for interdependent builds), try "Show changes from snapshot dependencies" option for the build configurations with dependencies.

If you have builds that need specifying additional parameters on every build run, typed parameters feature is to explore.

If you prefer to see TeamCity user names instead of VCS ones for the changes: the feature is already in.

I am sure you will find something new for you to explore in the build.

Our current plans are to polish features added in the recent EAP builds and prepare for the release of 7.0 which is planned for February. As we are approaching the release, your feedback on the features would be highly valuable at this time!

TeamCity 6.5.6: BugFix Update

2011-12-09T20:17:00.001+04:00

We've updated our official download page with build 18130 which is stable TeamCity 6.5.6 release.

The version contains fixes related to IDEA and Visual Studio plugins, performance, Mercurial support improvements and more.

The same internal data storage format is used, so downgrade to any 6.5.x is possible.

BTW, we've got an IPhone app for TeamCity by one of our users. It displays last build statuses for selected projects. iOS 5 is required. You might find it useful if you often check how green is your project.

TeamCity 7.0 EAP build 20702: My Investigations, Steps Disabling and Integrated NuGet Repostiory

2011-11-24T18:56:00.001+04:00

This Thanksgiving fresh snapshot of upcoming TeamCity 7.0 is available for you to try at EAP page.

Almost no big new additions, just improvements all over the system and minor features like ability to disable build steps, displaying content of archived artifacts, My Investigations page, etc.

For .Net users, it might be interesting to try TeamCity as NuGet repository, which is first available in this release

See details in the release notes or browse through full fixed issues list.

Recently our team has got a new client-side developer and the EAP build already includes many of his changes. To name a few: search by build configuration name in a popup of Projects tab, fixed middle clicks, improvements in diff view. Welcome, Leonid!

So if you have any issues with layout/browser behavior of TeamCity web UI - they now have more chances of being fixed soon. Let us know about them!

TeamCity 6.5.5: BugFix Update

2011-10-27T20:38:00.000+04:00

While we are developing TeamCity 7.0, some important fixes are being back-ported to 6.5.x branch to deliver the fixes to you earlier then in 7.0 release.

Latest branch snapshot is released as 6.5.5 today and is available from the official download page.

Update is recommended for all users as there were some performance improvements. See the full list of fixed issues.

Data format is the same as in all 6.5.x releases, so if you are already on 6.5.x, it is possible to downgrade if necessary. Anyway, creating the backup before the upgrade is highly recommended.

TeamCity 7.0 EAP build 20334: Dependencies Graph, ReSharper-Powered Inspections and More

2011-10-11T23:57:00.001+04:00

And here we are with a new snapshot of the current TeamCity 7.0 state: EAP build 20334.

This build adds several highly voted features:

Dedicated setting for per-checkin builds in VCS trigger. If your builds are fast and you have enough agents you can now tick the option to ensure TeamCity includes no more then a single new change in a build. This could have been emulated with the quiet period setting for a long time, but now it works more reliably and is more obvious to use. BTW, we used the approach for R# builds before their release. That bit quite a bit of our agents farm but the approach gave the team more confidence in the changes and that proved very useful.

Visualization of build's snapshot dependencies graph. Build's Dependencies tab was reworked to display the entire graph of the build chain. The view allows to see the big picture if your setup is not too complex. We have thought on moving it further, but need your feedback to adjust our plans. If you use snapshot dependencies much, try installing this EAP build as a test server, share your graphs and let us know what would you like from it.

Ability to ask for certain properties on manual build run. This has been added as a part of introducing "meta-data" for build configuration properties: display label, type, required flag. So far this is configured via a tricky syntax, but is likely to be improved if the feature is well-received.

For you, Git and Mercurial users, we have added visualization of changes' parent/child relationships on Change Log tab of a build configuration.

And for you, .Net teams, we have bundled a ReSharper-powered tool that allows to run solution-wide analysis inside TeamCity and browse the results in the browser.

Read all the details in the release notes or look through the resolved issues.

While we use this EAP build on our production server, it is not recommended to use it on yours if you cannot rollback to the latest stable TeamCity (6.5.4) losing all the data collected in this EAP version. If you risk, ensure you have a good backup beforehand!

However, trying the features on a test installation and letting us know whether it covers your needs or not is highly anticipated.

TeamCity 6.5.4: BugFix Update

2011-09-20T22:35:00.000+04:00

We've just published a bugfix update for 6.5.x branch. Nothing really new, just fixes.
Update is recommended for all users as the build includes various performance improvements throughout the system.

While creating a backup is always recommended, the version uses the same data format, so if something goes wrong with it, you can downgrade to any of 6.5.x builds.

TeamCity 7.0 EAP is Open: Agent Pools, Fail Build on Metric Change and More

2011-09-01T17:49:00.000+04:00

So the codename for the next TeamCity major version (7.0) is to start with F. Not that much of a choice from Indian F-cities, so a tiny one, but most pleasantly sounding to the ears of our team: Faradi.

We are still to define 7.0 release date, but so far it seems like we will target it for the first quarter of 2012.

The good news are that you can try some of the features of upcoming 7.0 now: check the EAP release.
This build introduces features that will be further improved (based on your feedback!) to develop into solid features of 7.0.

As one of the focuses of 7.0 we plan various means to speed up your builds. This EAP starts the trend and introduces:

Agent Pools - allows to divide the agents into groups assigned to sets of projects, so you can dedicate more resources to specific projects easily;
Incremental Tests Running - support for selective tests running based on project model dependencies and the build's changes. This is available for IntelliJ IDEA project runner, Gradle and Maven runners. The functionality is new, so expect issues and make sure we know them;
Build Performance Monitor - build-level report to analyze CPU, memory and disk usage on the agent machines.

Also, check out new build failure options - for example you finally can fail a build if it's coverage is below the one of the previous build.
Check the full list and details on the new additions in the EAP change log.

This EAP updates the data structure, so you will not be able to downgrade to 6.5.x releases after the upgrade. Consider checking EAP features on a test server or prepare to restore 6.5.x server from backup if something goes wrong.

Hope you will take time to look into the features and let us know what you think.

TeamCity 6.5.3: BugFix Update

2011-08-06T08:51:00.000+04:00

Here is a new update with the latest fixes for 6.5.x installations.

Data format is still the same, so you can downgrade to earlier 6.5.x versions if you need this for some reason.

We are mostly working on next major TeamCity version now, only integrating critical or easy fixes into 6.5.x branch. We will publish first 7.0 EAP in about three weeks.

BTW, if you are attending Agile 2011 in Salt Lake City next week, you are welcome to drop by JetBrains booth there for a live chat on TeamCity, YouTrack or other JetBrains products.

TeamCity 6.5.2: Fixes, Fixes, Fixes

2011-07-08T21:42:00.002+04:00

Here is the build to upgrade your servers. Almost nothing really new, just fixes and several minor improvements mostly drived by your valuable feedback. See the report from the issue tracker for details.

The build uses the same data format as 6.5 and 6.5.1, so you can downgrade to 6.5.x if you need (but you hopefully do not).

BTW, if you have not yet checked recent update of JetBrains YouTrack to version 3.0, you might want to give it a try (free edition included). YouTrack team is also starting with YouTrack hosted offering, which definitely deserves a try if you need something lightweight yet powerful for your next project.

Like hosted YouTrack and want the same for TeamCity?
That's not something that we are already preparing while we do think about it.
We would really like to hear real-life stories why you need this and for what type of projects.

TeamCity 7.0 Features Discussion: Agent Pools

2011-06-08T22:42:00.000+04:00

Apart from maintaining 6.5.x branch and addressing critical issues there, we are preparing for a jump into 7.0 features and spend quite a time elaborating general directions and specific features. We will surely start presenting them within upcoming EAP releases.

There is one of the minor features I'd like to ask your feedback for at this time. It is a so-called Agent Pools: ability to manage assignment of build configurations to agents not only on agent level, but for a set of agents. This is necessary to reduce configuration effort.
Apparently, this is only an issue for installations with many agents, but we get a continuous flow of related requests from many customers.

Current idea that we want to start with is:

Allow creating an "agent pool" that will hold a set of agents. Each agent can belong to a single pool only. There is a default pool of agents that all agents initially belong to.

A pool has a set of associated projects. This means:
a) the agent in the pool can only run the builds belonging to the associated projects;
b) the builds from the build configurations within the projects can only be built on the agents of the associated pools (a single project can be associated with several agent pools).

We will still preserve current ability to select build configurations that can be run on a specific agent.

Now the question for you: Does this approach sound like a major help in simplifying your agent management needs? Is restricting the granularity to project level is enough for your specific case?

Feel free to vote in the poll (to the right on the main blog page) or leave your comments.

TeamCity 6.5.1 Bugfix Update

2011-06-08T20:23:00.000+04:00

A fresh update is available on the download page for those of you who've encountered critical issues with 6.5 update.
Changes are mostly bug fixes addressing issues that we've introduced while implementing new features in 6.5.

The database structure is the same as with 6.5 which means that you can downgrade to 6.5 if something goes wrong with 6.5.1.

TeamCity 6.5 is Here: New Features and Less Restrictive Free Edition

2011-05-26T14:14:00.000+04:00

If you look through the What's New list of the release you are likely to see something useful for you.
We worked hard and we hope the release will make you a bit more happy with TeamCity and also with your builds.

The release both tweaks old things (like restyling web UI or renaming Responsibility into Investigation) and adds new strokes (like remote run on branches and test failures muting). These new directions are still to be fully explored and improved in the further releases based on your feedback.

Please make sure to look through the Upgrade Notes before you upgrade. It is recommended to test-drive the new version before upgrading your production TeamCity installation.

Our further plans are to start development of the next major version (TeamCity 7.0) and release updates to 6.5.x version with minor improvements and critical bug fixes if they surface.

TeamCity 6.5 RC: Days For the Official Release

2011-05-19T20:26:00.000+04:00

Here is a build that is one tiny step before the official 6.5 release. It has just several bug fixes over the previous one and is meant to be the last chance to try a build before the release.

If you consider upgrading to 6.5, consider trying the build and warning us on any misbehavior found.

A hint: this build still has an EAP license bundled (valid for 30 days) so this can be yet another reason to download and try it :)

In the mean time we are starting to think what could we bring in TeamCity 7.0 and you might add your thoughts as well :)

TeamCity 6.5 Pre-Release: Less Restrictive Professional Edition and Stability Improvements

2011-05-12T14:46:00.000+04:00

We are only a small step away from 6.5 release and here is a build for you to try in your environment and let us know if anything goes wrong. The final 6.5 is planned to be released within a week or so.

Starting with this build we are dropping most limitations from Professional TeamCity edition except for the 20 build configurations limit. Now you can use per-project roles, any user authentication and more then 20 users in your TeamCity Professional installation.
As a professional user, you might be also interested in using more build configurations and here is a place to share your thoughts on this.

This build include a new way to install an agent onto a new machine: "agent push". Provided you have administrator credentials for a remote machine, you can now install a TeamCity agent on it right from "Agent Push" tab under Agents. The feature is in a bit "experimental" state, but we hope to improve it in further releases based on your feedback.

The build also further improves test muting and remote run on branches features as well as bundles PowerShell runner.

See more in the change log or full fixed issues list.

We ask you to try the build in your environment and let us know if anything goes wrong.

Get ready for the 6.5 release!

Responsibility Becomes Investigation. Are you an Investigator?

2011-05-04T22:06:00.001+04:00

TeamCity has responsibility feature since the early days.

At first, it was introduced as an easy way to say to your buddy developers: "Hey, I've looked into the failure and I will try to fix it!". This was initially available only for build configurations but then was extended to individual test failures.

Then, we have got lots of request to allow assigning responsibility to other users. The reasoning is clear: I investigated a failure and figured out the dev who is to look into it. Now I want to ping him and let others know my findings right inside TeamCity UI.

But that is where social forces are brought into the play: we started to hear that many companies are not using "assign responsibility" because it sounds like blaming and the assigned party often gets a bit upset to say the least.

At that point we decided to rename responsibility into something other to reduce the "blame" impact. Choosing a good alternative took time and lots of considerations.
Finally, in 6.5 we are ready to introduce the renaming and are now using "investigation" instead of "responsibility".

One piece, though. How should we call a person who is investigating the failure?
Does "investigator" sounds right in the context? Should we stick with it or retreat to "assignee of the investigation"?
And we need your help here. Do you consider "investigator" a right term or not? Why?
Any alternatives you might suggest?

Please comment in the original issue or here.

Last EAP build before 6.5: Parametrized VCS roots, dotCover Add-in Integration and More

2011-04-15T00:59:00.000+04:00

With current plans for 6.5 release in May we are publishing the latest additions to TeamCity and wait for your feedback. And there are lots to try and play with.

Parametrized VCS roots
You can now use %-references to TeamCity properties inside VCS roots. This opens a wide range of applications ranging from settings reuse between build configurations or builds in a chain to running a custom build specifying branch/tag on build start. Combined with ability to "publish" properties from a build and use them later via dep. references this unleashes power that is still to be understood.
Is your beloved case supported? Does it work as expected? Let us know!

Test muting improvements
We continue to improve test muting feature that allows to mark a test as not contributing to the build status.
Sounds interesting or scary?

Know your agents
If you ever wondered what agents have alike or differentiating environment, now you have a report to answer the question. Look under Agents / Parameters Report.
Did you manage to find something new about your agents?

And nobody should walk away empty-handed: there is a lot more in the build, including artifact dependencies on build tags and displaying failed tests grouped by package/namespace in UI.

See details in the change log or even dive deep into the fixed issues list.

Did I mention that your timely feedback is something that is really making TeamCity better?

TeamCity 6.0.3 Bugfix Update

2011-03-15T14:25:00.000+03:00

The official download page has been updated to let you download 6.0.3 release with latest fixes for the stable TeamCity release.

Update is recommended for all users. Especially if you are using Perforce agent-side checkout, Maven or XML report import.

You can review the full list of fixed issues in our tracker.

Thank you all who reported issues against TeamCity 6.0 so we have ability to provide fixes for everyone.

In this particular update we introduced no new data convertors, so you can downgrade from 6.0.3 to any of 6.0.x versions just reinstalling/replacing TeamCity binaries and pointing them to the same .BuildServer directory.

In case you are a bit tired with a stable version and interested in what is coming in TeamCity 6.5, consider test driving our EAP.

TeamCity 6.5 EAP (build 17372): Mute Tests, AssemblyInfo Version Patcher, MSpec and More

2011-03-09T23:40:00.000+03:00

Here is a new EAP build for the upcoming 6.5 release. The major additions include:

Ability to mute tests. You can mute tests whenever you see a test name in TeamCity UI. The muted test still runs in a build, but it's failure does not paint the build red. Still to go is ability to automatically unmute the test after specified time or on successful test pass.
Tests grouping. Failed tests are now grouped by package in most lists.
.Net AssemblyInfo version injection. Need to add a version for your .Net assembly? Add corresponding build feature to scan the sources for AssemblyInfo files and inject build number into them before the build.
MSpec support. You can now natively run MSpec tests in TeamCity, coverage support included.

For more detailed description see the release notes and full list of fixed issues.

As usual, we are waiting for your feedback on the new additions in this build so that we can adjust our development efforts for 6.5

TeamCity 6.5 EAP is Open

2011-02-08T21:24:00.001+03:00

We have branched our sources for 6.x just after release of 6.0, so we are working on new features for more then 2 months already, just integrating critical fixes into 6.0.x branch (that we release bugfix updates from).

During this time we started several new features some of which we are ready to announce today in the scope of the first EAP build. The main purpose is to let you know what we are working on and allow you to provide feedback early in the development.

We use fresh builds on our internal production server for several weeks already, so it should not have huge issues. However, there surely can be problems, so please use the build with usual precautions for trying preview software.

The first thing you notice physically about this ~~lady~~ build is a new color scheme and more lightweight style. I already leaked a screenshot back at RC times but now you can try it live for yourself. Love or hate it? Let us know.

Another important addition is preview of the feature to run a personal build in TeamCity for Git and Mercurial by pushing private branches to the server. This is the first time we introduce "branch" notion into TeamCity and it will probably develop into many more features in the future.

For other additions, please see the release notes or the full fixed issues list.

A note for planing your upgrades: we want to release TeamCity 6.5 sometime at the end of the spring.

Stay tuned to be the first to try the new features in the following EAP releases. You can not only try but influence them.

So start with this build: get, test-drive, let us know!

TeamCity 6.0.2 BugFix Update

2011-01-26T18:38:00.001+03:00

We just uploaded TeamCity 6.0.2 which is a bugfix update for 6.0.

The release contains various fixes and performance improvements throughout the system.
See the list of fixed issues.

As you've probably noticed this blog missed announcement on TeamCity 6.0.1 release that came out in the last days of year 2010. Sorry for that. I was in the middle of moving from Saint-Petersburg to Munich and dropped off the work for some time.
And yes, JetBrains opened a new development office in Germany, so part of TeamCity team in now working from Munich. But that's a different story :)

Plugin Initiatives

2010-12-18T00:31:00.000+03:00

After 6.0 release we've got some a bit relaxed time and while we were discussing future plans in a set of meetings we also decided to announce internal "write your own whatever you like plugin" time.

Not all team members were participating as some had urgent tasks, but we've got some new plugins rolling.
Some of them are early prototypes not ready for any public preview and some are mature enough to be called beta versions :)

Here is the list of final entrants that we had demoed today:
- day/week changes commit time visualizer (aka PunchCard)
- PowerShell runner
- Meta runner (make a new runner out of existing one allowing to customize only fixed set of options)
- customized agent lists with selected properties displayed (aka Custom Tables)
- display notifications from administrator to all TeamCity users in web UI
- Android runner
- Eclipse PDE build runner
- Scripted properties: extensible way to provide generated values to TeamCity build properties (build start time, value from a Windows registry on agent, values from TeamCity object model)

- OpenId authentication support
- trigger a build on HTTP URL resource change
- expose server model to Flex code (current usage is to draw Build Configuration dependencies graph)

Several of the plugins are already published with sources publicly available, several more will probably follow.

If you are interested in any of the mentioned topics, let us know.

I'll update this post with links to the plugin details, when available.

Do you have your plugin for TeamCity? Care to share one?

Winter and TeamCity 6.0 Have Just Arrived

2010-12-01T20:34:00.000+03:00

TeamCity build #15772 is named official 6.0 release and is already sitting in the downloads waiting to be installed on your servers.

What's New pretty much summarizes the major improvements over the previous releases.

We've added lots of new features and started exploring some of the new ones that we will be improving in the following releases. And we need your feedback for the right direction of the improvements. If you love the feature and want just a small improvement or find it unusable - don't forget to let us know.

I will note several not so prominent additions to this release, that can still deserve your attention.
These are mainly of interest to build engineers and TeamCity administrators:

Property completion lists (those available via an icon in text fields) now list properties that come from agents: you no longer need to consult agent pages when referencing a property. In the same mood, defining agent requirements dialog is now aware of available agent properties and their values.
Schedule build trigger got an option not to trigger if only specific changes are pending.
Snapshot dependencies can now enforce a build to be run on the same agent as the one it depends from.
Server Diagnostics got presets for debug logging, so for basic debugging tasks you no longer need to go hack log4j config file.

If you are interested in specific issues, you can browse all 6.0 fixed issues in our YouTrack installation. Are there any filed or voted by you? (Just add "created by:me" or "voted by:me" to the query string while being logged in.) My score is 259. What is yours?

Ready to go? Do not forget to review the upgrade notes before performing the upgrade.

TeamCity 6.0 RC2 (build 15700): Changes Filter in Schedule Trigger and Fixes

2010-11-17T23:53:00.000+03:00

As one more bit before the release here is a RC2 build.

It has only several noteworthy changes and some issues fixed.

A little but wanted feature still slipped in at this time: ability to make Schedule trigger skip triggering a build if the pending changes match specific pattern.

Please note that this build comes without bundled EAP license key (but you can still get one form previous EAP build if you wish :).

Want to get a preview of the almost ready TeamCity 6.0? Jump on the train.

BTW, if you happen to still have TeamCity 4.x installed, you might want to consider buying an upgrade before 6.0 comes out (you can count days now). This way you can still get upgrade discount and get 6.0 and (as with a usual license) get all following releases within a year included into the price.

TeamCity 6.0 RC1 (build 15673): .Net coverage and other improvements

2010-11-12T23:23:00.000+03:00

As the release is close we are trying to share the current TeamCity state more frequently with you.

The version has "RC" in the footer to denote close release, while we are still working on fixes and minor improvements.

This release moves Swabra settings out of the build step settings into a new place called "Features". The "Features" section will also get XML test reporter settings soon. This new section is designed to hold settings not specific to any particular build step, but participating in the build behavior.

If you have a plugin for TeamCity which affects build behavior but is not specific to a build step, you can consider moving plugin settings into the section. See the sources of the mentioned plugins for an example.

For this build's changes review, see the release notes or dive into resolved issues in the tracker.

As we are approaching release we are extremely interested in any upgrade and stability issues with this build.

Want to ensure seamless upgrade of your setup to final TeamCity 6.0? Try upgrading your data with a test installation of this RC.

PS I was a bit quick to announce some surprise feature in the previous EAP post. Unfortunately, we decided to postpone it till future releases since it will require some more work (and your feedback too!)