[Anthill-pro] Anthill3 extensions

[Maciej Zawadzki]

Paul,

We would do things a little differently in AnthillPro3 -- actually, the
very exact use case that you describe is explicitly supported by
AnthillPro3.  What you're describing would be handled by the concept of
Living Builds that we introduced.

You can read more about Living Builds on our site, but essentially they
allow you to link multiple workflow processes to the same build -- i.e.
the same artifacts produced from a set of source code.

So, in AnthillPro3, you would have a build workflow that would take
source code from CVS and build it thus producing artifacts.   Rather
than checking those artifacts into CVS, those artifacts would be managed
by AnthillPro3 using its built-in artifact repository.  So lets say that
Anthill does a build right now of your project; lets call this build
1.2.3.  It gets the source code, compiles it, produces artifacts.  Now,
your deployment guy can log into AnthillPro and see that Living Build
1.2.3 is ready.  He can then click on that Living Build and decide to
run a secondary process on that Living Build.  From a drop down list he
would select the secondary process to be run -- in this case he would
select a Deployment process.  Next he would select what environment or
server group to run that on.  He could select QA or PROD or whatever
other server group was configured in AnthillPro3.  Once that is
selected, and he presses "OK" then AnthillPro will run the deployment
workflow.  The first thing that happens is that AnthillPro3 gets the
exact artifacts produced earlier by build 1.2.3 and then deploys them.

So, the end goal of your scenario is supported by AnthillPro3 in its
entirety.  It is in fact almost an exact instance of a use case we made
sure we would support when we started working on AnthillPro3.  The only
difference is the mechanics underneath required to accomplish this.  And
there the main difference is that AnthillPro3 uses its own artifact
repository and you're currently using CVS as both your source control
system and as your artifact repository.

One of the main reasons that we decided to write our own artifact
repository is because source control systems are not particularly well
suited to be artifact repositories.

Anyhow, I hope this answers your question as to how your scenario would
be supported by AnthillPro3.  There are no extensions that need to be
written -- your scenario is supported fully with the ALAS (Application
Lifecycle Automation Server) functionality in AnthillPro3.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Regards,


--Maciej


Fink, Paul wrote:
> Anthill is cool. Anthill3 looks great ..... but (you knew there had to
> be an but)
> I have the same problem with deployment workflows in both versions.
> 
> In our department we create a build of our application and check that
> version into CVS. An administrator is suppose to check out a version and
> deploy it to the proper server (QA, UAT, or Prod). Using Anthill3 we can
> prompt the administrator for which version they want using a "Workflow
> Property" but they need to type in the exact version number. 
> 
> I would like to be able to display what versions are available and have
> them select the one the want. Can I create a Anthill3 extension that
> will let me display a list to the user? Is there an interface that will
> let a web page create a anthill3 task (to deploy the selected version)? 
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Paul
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