ANN: Anthill Pro v.2.1.5 (2.1 preview) now available

Version 2.1.5 of Anthill Pro is now available.  This version focused
mostly on improvements to the logging subsystem as well as handling of
environment variables.  Many bug fixes as well as requested features
were implemented as well.  The complete list of changes is below.

You can download this latest release at
https://www.urbancode.com/products/anthillpro/secure/protected/download.jsp

Thanks,

--The Anthill Team



-- issue #264 -- Shell Script Builder.  This new builder can execute
Unix shell scripts as well as Windows batch files.  It replaces the
Batch File Builder which could only execute Windows batch files.  The
replacements should be transparent.

-- issue #441 -- Make sure the order of the Ant classpath can be
controlled.  This release contains several changes that affect the way
in which ANT is invoked by Anthill, this issue is just one of them.  The
classpath used to execute ANT can now be controlled from within the ANT
Configuration module.  This is the only module that allows changes to
the ANT classpath.  You can no longer manipulate the ANT classpath in
the ANT builder or in the Java Configuration.

-- issue #479 -- Customizable Build Notification Email.  This has been
an outstanding issue for some time, and one which was becoming more and
more requested recently.  It is now possible to customize via the Email
Template Module the build notifications sent out by Anthill.  The Email
Template Module uses Jakarta Velocity as the templating engine.

-- issue #522 -- Revision log should pick up changes since the last
successful build.  Before this change, the revision log included only
the changes since the last build, regardless of whether the last build
succeeded or failed.

-- issue #524 -- Ant Builder errors not reported in log.  The ANT
builder log used to not capture the last message from ANT indicating why
the build failed.  Since we've changed how ANT is invoked and how the
ANT log is captured, this last message from ANT is now captured.

-- issue #567 -- Multi-threaded build not safe.  The logging system used
by Anthill was never thread safe, thus multiple simultaneous builds
would get their logs co-mingled.  This release includes many changes to
the logging system including thread safety.

-- issue #584 -- Make Builder environment variables not persistent.  The
Make builder was not restoring its environment variables after an
Anthill restart.  This has been fixed.

-- issue #586 -- Exception while deleting Schedules with projects.
Deleting a Schedule that was used by at least one project used to throw
an exception.

-- issue #587 -- Having multiple BuildDefinitions for the same
BuildTrack in the Build Queue would cause BuildDefinitions to disappear.
        This has been fixed.

-- issue #588 -- Ability to set Environment Variables for the Batch File
Builder.  The Batch File builder has been merged into the Shell Script
Builder, which does support environment variables.

-- issue #589 -- Wrong Web context name associated with Anthill instance
if first request is to the Intranet after an Anthill restart.  Because
Anthill can be deployed to any context name (not just "AnthillPro"),
Anthill must calculate its context name at run-time.  But, if the first
request after a restart was to the Intranet, the calculated context name
was wrong since the Intranet did not do the calculation properly.  This
has been fixed.

-- issue #593 -- Email Notification on Firs Success after Failed
Build(s).  It is now possible to configure the Email Build Notifier to
send an email only on failed builds and on the first success after a
failed build.

-- issue #596 -- Intranet shows directories only one level deep.  In
2.1.4 the Intranet was changed to display only one level of
subdirectories.  The reason for displaying only one level of
subdirectories in the Intranet is memory consumption.  The Directory
Publisher was modified to support multiple directory filters to get
around this limitation (see issue #614).

-- issue #599 -- Project list not sorted.  The display of module
instances for any module type was not being sorted.

-- issue #600 -- Rename the Build Notifier.  The Build Notifier has been
renamed to Email Build Notifier.

-- issue #601 -- Change to Meaningful scheduled user parameter.   The
value of the "anthill.user.name" parameter passed into the builders now
includes the name of the Schedule that caused the build to run.  The
format of the value containing the schedule name is
"SCHEDULE:<schedule_name>".

-- issue #602 -- Intranet not removing expired builds.  A bug introduced
in 2.1.4 caused the Intranet to keep nodes referring to "expired" builds.

-- issue #603 -- Logging as a potential cause of OutOfMemoryError.
Along with thread safety this is another big change to the logging
system.  The logs from builds are no longer being held in memory but are
stream directly to temporary files.  This gives Anthill the ability to
handle much larger log files without adverse effects.  Also, stability
of the Anthill server process should be improved as there will be no
build up in memory consumption over time due to logs.

-- issue #604 -- Windows Shell script used to execute Maven not
forwarding result code.  The Maven shell script is being called directly
now without any wrapper batch file.  It is quite possible that the
Maven.bat script  will still not return the error code, in which case
the following line needs to be added to the bottom of that batch file:
exit \b %errorlevel%

-- issue #605 -- Environment Variable Substitution.  It is now possible
to reference the values of existing env. vars. in the definition of env.
vars. being passed into a process called by Anthill.  An env. var.
definition such as: PATH=my/path;${env.PATH} will substitute the current
value of the PATH variable for the expression ${env.PATH}.

-- issue #606 -- Support for AccuRev Source Code Management System.  Two
drivers for AccuRev have been added.

-- issue #608 -- Add Environment Variables support to Maven Builder.

-- issue #609 -- Maven builder should support optional base directory.
In cases where the Maven project.xml file is not in the root of the
project, it's location can be specified with the base directory parameter.

-- issue #610 -- Upgrade to ANT 1.5.4.  This release bundles ANT 1.5.4
instead of the older ANT 1.5.1.  There is an important (although small)
change that has been made to the standard ANT distribution.  The Windows
ant.bat file has had the following line added:
exit \b %errorlevel%

This line forwards the exit value returned by ANT to the caller of the
batch file.  If you use your own ANT configuration, make sure to add
that line to the end of the ant.bat file.

-- issue #611 -- Email Build Notifiers should have configurable names.

-- issue #612 -- VCS Driver "Delete Files on Cleanup" should be "True"
by default.

-- issue #613 -- StarTeam driver checkout directory error for
multilevel project paths.

-- issue #614 -- Directory Publisher should support multiple directory
filters.  This new feature allows users to publish artifacts from
multiple base directories using the Directory Publisher.  This feature
was added mainly because issue #596 could not be resolved.