TeamCity 6.5 EAP is Open

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

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

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

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

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

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!)

TeamCity EAP: Upgrade Confirmation, Bundled dotCover and More

This EAP build (#15638) is one of the last ones to have major feature additions before the upcoming TeamCity 6.0.

Our plans are to release 6.0 in about a month and now we are shifting our main effort to bugfixing and minor improvements. If you want to try new 6.0 features and give us feedback so that we can address it before the release, it's high time to grab the build and test-drive it in your environment.

If you are from .Net camp you can now start to collect code coverage with several simple settings configured from web UI. This is possible thanks to bundled JetBrains dotCover console tool. You can view coverage reports in TeamCity web UI before you decide to equip each developer with dotCover add-in for Visual Studio.

As to changes before 6.0, we have one more card in our sleeve that is likely to be exposed in one of the final EAP builds, so stay tuned.

Beware of the new upgrade confirmation screen that you will see upon first launch of  this TeamCity server.
Starting from this version TeamCity displays the current settings and allows to create backup of the data before proceeding. (Creating backup is only available if you upgrade from previous 6.0 EAP and any future builds)

Please check the settings are correct before proceeding (so that you do not point your test server to a production database by mistake).

This information is displayed only to authenticated users who have physical access to the server: can view TeamCity logs (logs/teamcity-server.log) and grab "Maintenance Authentication Token" from the log.

See the release notes for other major additions or look through full fixed issues list.

And please do not forget to let us know what you think.