Meister/Mojo 7.4 is now available for download.  Get Server Pooling, Binary Publishing, improved trend reports and new graphs, all in 7.4.  Download at http://www.openmakesoftware.com/get-meister/

In a recent LinkedIn discussion, it became clear that many .NET developers struggle with using MSBuild to compile using different libraries to support builds for different states in the life cycle.  Meister addresses this level of dynamic library manipulation.   To really understand what is needed to do this, we can go back in time, not to far, when Make was the preferred scripting language.  Remember the VPATH statement? The VPATH statement allowed you to specify the version of libraries you needed for any state of a build.  Both MSBuild and Ant/Maven has forgotten about this feature.   Meister supports the VPATH like structure called a Dependency Directory. For a single application, you can support as many different Dependency Directory structures as you need.  For example CI, QA Pre-Prod, Emergency.  And for resolving cross platform dependencies, Meister takes multiple solution files and treats them as one big application compiling and linking in the correct order as needed.  Hope this helps for those of you looking for .NET build solutions.

Don’t miss our webinar on Feb. 24th.  Learn how you can begin leveraging the cloud for improved software builds.  Register https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/504136590

I’m in the middle of evaluating and comparing continuous integration tools, and thought that my interim results were interesting enough to warrant posting. I put the first part of the analysis on my blog. The comparison includes Mojo, Hudson, TeamCity and Bamboo.

Check out the full results on technistas.com.

- Matt Laudato

Director, Customer Solutions

matt.laudato@openmakesoftware.com

Those of you who use Meister or Mojo on a daily basis know what I’m talking about - as a build engineer, Meister gives you a command center that puts you in control of your build, test and deploy environment. This short post on my personal blog Technistas, reminds you why you love Meister - and why OpenMake will continue to serve you, the build engineer - our most valued customer.

http://technistas.com/2010/03/22/the-build-engineers-desktop/

Happy Building!

- Matt 

We announced today that we have become a member of the CollabNet technology partner program adding OpenMake Meister and Mojo to the collabXchange, an online integration marketplace.  CollabNet TeamForge with Subversion and OpenMake Meister are ideal solutions for improving distributed software development practices, particularly around agile methods from check-in through build and release.  

Meister extends the centralization features of the CollabNet framework into the critical step of compiling and linking the Subversion-managed source code.  Meister allows the CollabNet framework to orchestrate the complexities of the software build, improving software quality and minimizing costly bottlenecks due to broken or ‘bad’ builds. Together, Meister and CollabNet offer a complete solution to enterprise ALM challenges.

“This partnership furthers our commitment to delivering industry-leading solutions to our customers.  OpenMake Software was added to our list of technology partners for two reasons.  First, their Meister technology improves and accelerates the Continuous Integration process for Agile developers” states Jim Ensell, VP Business Development, CollabNet. “In addition, it delivers intelligent, enterprise level audit controls around the build and release process.”

“OpenMake Meister integrates with Subversion to deliver accelerated builds for both .Net and Java improving continuous integration by eliminating build bottlenecks.  It also exposes all Subversion managed source used during the build and release process providing a complete enterprise level audit trail” explains Tracy Ragan, COO and Co-founder, OpenMake Software.   OpenMake Software also offers a free Continuous Integration Server, called Mojo that integrates with the CollabNet framework.

CollabNet provides the industry’s most open and extensible platform for distributed ALM, enabling CollabNet Technology Partners to rapidly and easily create integrated products for distribution on collabXchange, expanding their potential customer bases to include the millions of software developers using the CollabNet platform today.

As long as we are on the topic of Build Avoidance, lets bring up how critically important Build Avoidance is to your Continuous Integration process.  Remember - your Continuous Integration process is only as good as your build scripts.  To improve your CI process the engine that drives your compile and link process must be “smart.”  What does “smart” mean you ask.  A smart build knows more than you do about how your application is put together. This means that is understands the dependencies (compile, provided, system scope, etc). With those dependencies is can accurately rebuild your application by only updating what has been changed.

Yes, you can do this for Java, .Net or any native language such as C/C++.  What does this buy you. First, in most cases your CI compile and link step will execute in less than a few minutes.  Secondly, you are given a platform for doing pre-flight builds where any developer can re-compile the entire application, locally, without wasting an hour (or a few hours).

If you want your CI process to run really fast and accurately, make your builds “smart” so you don’t have to run “clean all” every time you execute a pre-flight or CI build.  Hey it is 2010 already. Start using your computer to orchestrate your compile and link process and stop writing static scripts that lack the ability to support your development process without your constant attention.  This is real build automation.

For more information on how Meister’s builds are “smart” see “Smart Builds for Fast Continuous Integration” found at http://www.openmakesoftware.com/build-management-white-papers/

In a recent article, the term “Build Avoidance” was referenced as if it was something new and improved.  NEWS Flash!  Build Avoidance was a term coined by IBM and referenced the way in which ClearMake handles Incremental Build processing, meaning only re-compile what has been updated and AVOID the rest.

“Build Avoidance” should be a primary function of your Build and Release Management solution.  It is not “new” by any means.  The biggest challenge with “Build Avoidance” is to support it for all languages from Unix C to .Net and Java. For example,  the “gnumake” based scripting languages only supports C/C++ languages. Ant/Maven scripting supports “pseudo incremental builds” which really is the opposite of what you would think.  Maven’s “pseudo incremental builds” does a “clean all” on the Projects that have changed, not on just the source code that has changed.  Doing a “clean all” is not avoiding a build it is making sure that objects will be rebuilt by deleting them.

Meister has supported Build Avoidance for all languages for over 15 years.  Only OpenMake Meister can actually make the claim for C/C++, .Net, Java and yes even COBOL.

So the moral of the story is, if your build management tool is not supporting Build Avoidance, or some how touts that this is a new concept, you should look for a better Build and Release Management solution.

People ask me all the time about build and SCM issues - possibly because I work for a build company and used to work for an SCM company. So it’s fun to be able to put both of these interests together, as I did in this short demo. It shows how to put togther a highly functional continuous integration system using Subversion for SCM and OpenMake Meister for build and workflow automation.

The demo can be viewed from the OpenMake site here. If you’re interested in a writeup of the technical details, you can also visit my blog Technistas, where I talk about this system in a recent blog post.

 Happy building!

 - Matt

This is a cross post of a blog I wrote on my personal site techinistas.com. A few days ago I needed to figure out how to use the Salesforce.com API to bulk update some records. A few hours and a bit of perl code later, I had a functioning app that did the trick. If you are interested in web services programming, perl and Salesforce, take a look here:

http://technistas.com/2009/12/09/practical-salesforce-programming/

Happy deploying!

- Matt