Compass Version1.1

TOC

Scheduling Builds

Once a build plan is created it must be scheduled to run in the Compass Scheduler. A build can be scheduled in two ways. When a user accesses the Project List page by clicking on the projects tab at the top of Compass they are presented the list of all projects they are a user of. For each project in the list, if a user is the project administrator or if they are a site-wide administrator they are given options to schedule and run a build as shown here:

In the above image, this user is a project admin for the Compass Example 1 and Compass Example 3 projects, and highlighted are the scheduling options from this page. The drop down box lists displays a list of all the build plans in this project. After selecting the one that you want to schedule, users can click on 'run now' which will schedule the build immediately. Or, the can click the schedule build button, which will open the schedule dialog which allows users to schedule the build in a variety of ways.

The other way to bring up the schedule dialog is to go to the build plan editor. The build plan editor can be accessed by navigating to the project details page and the clicking on the edit/schedule build button for the build plan you want to schedule. The edit/schedule button looks like this:

Once in the build plan editor the list of currently scheduled builds is shown below the build plan configuration section. The scheduled builds sectioni looks like this when there are no currently scheduled builds:

When the user clicks the Schedule Build button the schedule dialog appears. This is the same dialog that appears from the project list page and it looks like this:

As you can see, this dialog contains 3 tabs:

Immediate
Date/Time
Revision

The next three sections below explain what these three scheduling options provide:

Immediate Build Scheduling

To schedule a build to execute immediately click on the Immediate tab and then click the 'OK' button at the bottom right. This will immediately schedule the build plan to execute for all configurations that the build plan specifies to build on. The build will not actually start immediately because Compass must wait for a build client to accept the build and to download all of the required scripts from the Compass server. This process can take up to two minutes but usually happens within a few seconds.

Date/Time Build Scheduling

To schedule a build to happen on specific days or at specific times, users can select the 'Date/Time' tab. The Date/Time tab is shown in the above image. There are 2 parts to the Date/Time tab. First users must select the date and time that the build will first execute. Secondly, users choose how often the build will repeat by selecting one of the four repetition options and filling in any required data for the reptition rate. The four repetition options are:

Run Once - this will simply run the build a single time at the specified date and time.
Every __x__ minutes/hours/days - This option will make the build execute at a regular interval, with builds scheduled to start at the specified interval. users enter an integer value and select either minutes, hours, or days from the drop down box.
Every __x__ weeks on certain days - This option lets users schedule builds to occur on a weekly basis on certain days. For example: Every 3 weeks on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Users enter an integer value for the number of weeks between builds and select which days to run the build from the drop down selection box.
On certain months on certain days - This option lets users schedule builds to occur on a monthly basis on certain dates of each month. For example: Every January, April, July, October on the 15th day of the month. Users select the months from the first drop down list and which days of the month from the second drop down list. If a chosen date is not a valid day (like February 31), then that day is skipped by the scheduler.

Once the first execution date and time is set and the interval is selected and filled out, users click the 'OK' button and the build will be scheduled.

Revision Scheduling

To Schedule a build whenever a repository revision change occurs, users can select the Revision tab on the schedule dialog. This tab looks like this:

On this tab, users select the source-control server that the build plan is meant to execute builds on from the Select Server drop down. Next to this drop down is the URL for the server. There is also an optional path to watch textbox. Whenever the repository on the selected server and under the specified path changes, Compass will execute the build plan.

The optional path parameter is useful in a couple of different cases. In many cases a single source control server serves the repository for several projects. In that case, users can add an optional path to the end of the URL for the server to specify which path the trigger should act on. Another reason for specifying a path is when only parts of a project's repository should trigger the build when they change. For instance if a repository has three directories, docs, source, and scripts. Developers may only care when the source directory changes and not when scripts or when help docs change.