A typical Jazz build setup

This topic describes a typical Jazz build setup and illustrates the relationships between builds and roles.

Jazz build setup example

The following steps describe how to set up and run a typical Jazz build:
  1. The team's release engineer installs the Jazz™ Build Engine and Ant toolkit on the build machine. The engine and toolkit are clients of the Jazz Team Server. No service needs to run on the build machine.
  2. The release engineer creates a corresponding build engine in the Jazz repository. The engineer specifies which build definitions are supported by the build engine.
  3. The release engineer creates build definitions in the Jazz repository and a build script for each build definition. Typically, a build script is a versioned artifact under Jazz source control.

    A build definition can use a schedule to run a build. For example, you can set up a build to run at a continuous time interval and, optionally, choose to build or not based on source code changes in the Jazz repository. You can also set up a build to run at a specific time each day. Build tasks vary among projects. In addition to compiling source code and packaging the corresponding content into an appropriate executable form, a build can include other steps, such as running automated tests or running code quality tools over the code base.

  4. The release engineer starts the Jazz Build Engine on the build machine. The build engine polls the Jazz Team Server for build requests.
  5. The build engine retrieves a request to run a build. The build request identifies the build definition and can include property settings that override the default settings. The build definition communicates to the build engine which script to run. Each build definition has an associated build script, which is typically a versioned artifact under Jazz source control.
  6. The build engine runs the build script.
  7. The build script runs Ant tasks that communicate with the Jazz Team Server to fetch source files to compile from a stream or workspace, report progress, and create the build output, including artifacts, logs, and links. The build outputs are stored in the repository, so that developers can view the logs and download the build artifacts.

Builds and roles

The following figure illustrates the relationships between builds and two roles:
  • Release engineer, who creates build engines and build definitions
  • Developer, who runs the defined builds, monitors build progress, and examines build results

The figure illustrates the relationship between a release engineer, a developer, the Jazz team server, and Jazz build engines.

The figure illustrates the primary roles and facilities involved in setting up and running builds. The table below describes the roles and facilities.

Release Engineer
  • Sets up the build engine and build definitions for developers to use
  • Sets up build engines on build machines that access the Jazz Team Server
  • Creates build engine objects in the repository to correspond to the physical build machines
  • Creates build definitions in the repository
  • During operations, monitors build engines and build execution

Developer
  • Runs and monitors builds that are set up in the repository
  • Requests a build
  • Monitors build status
  • Views build results

Jazz Team Server and repository
  • Collects build requests, hands requests out to build machines that poll for requests, and manages results
  • Receives and stores build requests from developers
  • Receives status reports from build engines during build execution
  • Stores build execution results returned from the build engines

Build engines
  • Perform builds dispatched from the Jazz Team Server
  • Poll Jazz Team Server for build requests
  • Run build scripts
  • Report build status and results to the Jazz Team Server
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