[Anthill-announce] Anthill3 -- Preview 9 -- now available

[Maciej Zawadzki]

Hello Everyone,

We are pleased to announce Preview-9 of Anthill3.  This release includes
fixes to almost 50 issues.  Most notable among them is the support for
LDAP authentication as well as project Import/Export.  There are
numerous other improvements: setup and configuration should be easier
and more robust, and dependency management is more powerful allowing
cascading of workflows through dependencies.  A list of the major
changes is provided below.

We invite you to download
(https://www.urbancode.com/products/anthillpro/secure/protected/download.jsp)
the latest release and give it a try.  As always, we invite your
feedback.  If you have any questions or run into problems, please let us
know either via the AnthillPro mailing list or via an email to
support at urbancode.com.

Regards,

--The AnthillPro Team




NEW FEATURES
=========================================================================
#100 LDAP Authentication and Authorization.  It is now possible to
configure Anthill to use LDAP for authentication and authorization.
LDAP can be used for only the authentication keeping the authorization
configuration in Anthill3.

#102 Project Export/Import to XML has been completed.  This allows
projects to be backed up and exchanged.  It also allows for project
templates.

#164 Added Status Groups.  Rather than requiring that all projects share
the same statuses, users can now configure status groups and associated
them with projects.

#106 Scheduled deletion of BuildLifes.  It is now possible to configure
a schedule to delete all unwanted BuildLifes.

#197 Added support for BuildRequest Properties.  This allows the user to
pass additional parameter to the BuildRequest.  These parameters can
then be used during the build by scripts.

#227 Added JUnit test result publisher.  This publisher know how to
parse JUnit XML files and present a summary of the results.

#191 Agents must now be running the same version of the software in
order to be used.  Automatic detection of the Agent version along with
notification should make the upgrade process less error prone.

#142 Added a step to kick off a workflow on each dependency.  This can
be used to cascade the labeling of the SCM across all dependencies.

#155 Added email template that includes the changelog.

#190 Added a Step to set the Work Directory.  This is especially helpful
in generic Job Configurations that pull artifacts from Anthill, such as
deployment or promotion job configurations.


IMPROVEMENTS
=========================================================================
#192 Improved communications between Server and Agent so that the Agent
does not need to know the location of the Server.  This makes it easier
to configure Agents, especially if they are running on a different
machine than the server or a different network.

#225 Shell Builder was changed so that it can execute any command.  It
used to be able to only execute a script that was part of the project
sources.

#183 Forced Builds can now be scheduled.

#182 Changes to a dependency will now force a build of the dependent.
If A is dependent on B and there is a new build of B since the last
build of A, a new build of A will be forced.  We are also looking for
source changes to B when deciding whether to build A.

#154 When configuring Dependencies, it is now possible to select the
specific BuildLife of a dependency to be used or a status for a
BuildLife of a dependency.  This allows for very fine grain control over
the dependency relationships and to set up relationships such as: A is
dependent on the latest Released version of B or A is dependent on
version 1.2.3 of B.

#222 Set Work-dir step can now clean the work directory as well.

#185 It is now possible to change the order of the steps in the generic
job configuration.

#184 Statuses can be ordered.  This allows Statuses to be easily used to
model promotion levels.

#193 Added Database indexes on search fields


BUG FIXES
=========================================================================
#186 Text fields whose values contained " characters were getting cut off

#224 Under some circumstances BuildLife dependencies would not be
displayed in the Dependencies tab.

#206 Fixed problems with deleting Workflow Cases