TeamCity 4.0: Distributed Builds and Continuous Integration

by R.J. Lorimer on Dec 12, 2008 |

JetBrains TeamCity 4.0 has been released. TeamCity is a distributed build management and continuous integration server that can be deployed to Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X platforms.

TeamCity is designed around the concepts of a build server, a build queue, and a series of build agents. Triggers will introduce pending builds to the queue (a trigger could be anything from a commit to the version control system to a scheduled deadline being reached). The server selects idle agents that are available to perform builds, and organizes them into what is referred to as the build grid. The agents are then asked to execute the build, and the information and results of each build is gathered and catalogued by the server.

There are a number of new features in version 4.0 - here is a short recap of some of the key enhancements:

Build Chains - Support for complex dependent build snapshots.
User Interface Improvements and feature enhancements
History Builds - Support for building components from historical revisions, rather than from the most recent commit.
Custom Builds - Ability to provide custom parameters for any given component build.
Improved Management of Build Agents - Additional control and functionality over the individual build agents.
Test Reporting and Ordering - The build server can collect more statistical information about test runs (trending), and can also prioritize which tests should be run.
IDE Integration Improvements - Improved integration with Intellij and Eclipse.
.NET Support Improvements - Several new features for .NET builds.
Ruby Rake Support - Rake scripts can now be executed to build Ruby on Rails applications.

JetBrains offers a number of editions of TeamCity with pricing information, and several upgrade options for existing TeamCity users.

There is detailed documentation for TeamCity, including the supported platforms and technologies on the TeamCity wiki. Updates regarding TeamCity are available on the TeamCity Blog and the TeamCity Developers Blog.

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Community comments

TeamCity vs CruiseControl.net by Shamira Fernando Posted

Re: TeamCity vs CruiseControl.net by Michael Hedgpeth Posted

Re: TeamCity vs CruiseControl.net by Mileta Cekovic Posted

Re: TeamCity vs CruiseControl.net by Eric Rich Posted

Re: TeamCity vs CruiseControl.net by Neil Ellis Posted

TeamCity vs CruiseControl.net by Shamira Fernando

Cruise Control/CC.net has been a premier build tool for years. Can anyone justify whether TC 4.0 is better than CC.Net ? I'm a .net developer monitoring/administering multiple projects. I've been using CC.net for a while and wanted to migrate to TC 4.0. Any ideas on what is better than the other?

Re: TeamCity vs CruiseControl.net by Michael Hedgpeth

I've used both and TeamCity wins hands down. It will bring your continuous integration efforts into the mainstream of your company. I highly recommend you try it.

Advantages (see their website):
* Personal builds
* People configure their own notifications
* Nice Web interface
* Build agents so it's not 1 build on 1 machine it's 1 build on 3+ machines

Re: TeamCity vs CruiseControl.net by Mileta Cekovic

You really can't compare these two, Team City is way, way better and complete. Compared to Team City, CC.NET is a toy.
(I used both CC and CC.NET before Team City)

Re: TeamCity vs CruiseControl.net by Eric Rich

We are very happy with TeamCity. It just takes a few minutes to install and to get your projects building. Many build tools are supported out of the box. The pre-tested commits are very handy. The user interface is visually appealing and easy to use. Of course, it also has good integration with IntelliJ. :-)

I agree that CC is a toy compared to TeamCity. JetBrains did a nice job with this product!

Flux - Java Job Scheduler. File Transfer. Workflow.

Re: TeamCity vs CruiseControl.net by Neil Ellis

Yep one more for TeamCity - the pre-commit option is a major step forward. Now I can make sure I don't check in code that will break the build. Looking forward to seeing more intelligence and 'joined-up' thinking in build servers.