A Codestation project models products (such as third-party tool kits and software libraries) not built by your organization. For example, if your web application requires Java 5, you configure a Codestation project and upload Java 5 into an artifact set. Once this is done, your other AnthillPro projects that require Java 5 will depend on the artifact set of this Codestation project. However, this Codestation project can never depend on another project.
Codestation projects also allow you to version the third-party tools or libraries within the artifact set. So if you decide to upgrade to Java 6, you can create a new Build Life (either on the project's Administration or Dashboard pages) and add the new artifacts. When the dependency is called during a build, AnthillPro will use your settings to determine which version to use (see Configure Dependencies). For example, it is possible for one component of your application to depend on Version 1 and a second component of your application to depend on Version 2 of the same Codestation project. This gives you fine-grained control of which versions of a third-party tool or library each AnthillPro project depends on.
Go to Administration > New Codestation icon.
Enter a name, give a description, select a Life-Cycle Model, and click Save.
If using Maven, you must assign a property by selecting the Property tab, clicking New Property, giving the property a name and value, and clicking Save.
Set permissions for who can use and edit the Codestation project. Select the appropriate roles on the Security tab. When done, click Save. See Setting Up Security.
Create Build Life. Because AnthillPro will not be building the project, you need to manually create a Build Live and upload new artifacts so they can be used by other projects. A typical approach would be to create a Build Life for every release of the third-party artifact managed, and then stamp that Build Life with the version of the library under management:
Click the New button under the Build Life section.
Input the stamp (e.g., if you are going to upload Java, give a stamp of Java 1.5, etc.) and click Done.
Select either Upload File or Upload Many Files (for uploading a .zip Archive).
Select the correct artifact set. The artifact set was inherited from the lifecycle model you selected in a previous step. If an existing artifact set does not exist, you may need to go to System > Life-Cycle Models and create one for the appropriate model.
Directory Prefix. Optionally, give a base directory at the root of the artifact set and upload the file.
Click Upload.
Once configured, the project's artifacts are available as dependencies of AnthillPro projects. See Configure Dependencies.
For Codestation projects, a special status group reflecting your own approval system for third-party libraries is recommended. That way you can mark a new release of a library as under review or experimental while established releases might be marked as approved. This makes it easy for a development team to use the recent release of the artifact that has been approved.
With this configuration in place, the Codestation project can be used in dependency schemes in the same way as any internal project. And when you need to start testing a newer version of the artifacts, simply come back and create a new Build Life and mark it appropriately.
Properties tab. Add properties to the Codestation project to be used when resolving dependencies. See Managing Properties.
Status History tab. Allows the administrator to promote this Build Life to additional statuses. It also tracks when those statuses were assigned. This can be useful when you have configured custom statuses on the Life-Cycle Model. Click Add Status, select the status from the drop-down menu, and click Add.
To add more statuses, repeat the process.
Dependencies tab. Review which projects are using this Codestation Build Life. Once you configure an AnthillPro project to depend on this Build Life, it will be listed here.