BuildMaster is an integrated
build, release

Release management

The release management process is a relatively new but rapidly growing discipline within software engineering of managing software releases....

, and application lifecycle

Application Lifecycle Management

Application Lifecycle Management is a continuous process of managing the life of an application through governance, development and maintenance...

 management system that provides automation

Automation

Automation is the use of control systems and information technologies to reduce the need for human work in the production of goods and services. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization...

 of the software development

Software development

Software development is the development of a software product...

 build

Build Automation

Build automation is the act of scripting or automating a wide variety of tasks that software developers do in their day-to-day activities including things like:* compiling computer source code into binary code* packaging binary code* running tests...

, test, and deployment

Software deployment

Software deployment is all of the activities that make a software system available for use.The general deployment process consists of several interrelated activities with possible transitions between them. These activities can occur at the producer site or at the consumer site or both...

 processes.

Developed by Inedo, BuildMaster is a .NET

.NET Framework

The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...

-based web application that is configured entirely through its UI

Graphical user interface

In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

, in contrast to scripts or XML-based configuration files. Although the primary web application can only be run on Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, BuildMaster orchestrates Windows- or Linux-based servers to perform various build and deploy actions.

Main Features

• Approvals and Sign-Offs can be defined to ensure that the appropriate personnel approve a build prior to deployment.
• Auditing provides a comprehensive audit trail of user and system-initiated events covering every aspect of builds, promotions, executions, deployments, and administration.
• Change Controls can maintain a history of all manual steps performed in the process of deploying an application from installing hardware to registering a new service.
• Configuration File Management enables configuration files
  Configuration file
  In computing, configuration files, or config files configure the initial settings for some computer programs. They are used for user applications, server processes and operating system settings. The files are often written in ASCII and line-oriented, with lines terminated by a newline or carriage...
  
   to be defined with multiple instances (such as one per environment), in version-controlled manner, and with file deployments logged.
• Continuous Integration
  Continuous integration
  In software engineering, continuous integration implements continuous processes of applying quality control — small pieces of effort, applied frequently...
  
  allows builds to be scheduled granularly or triggered by a source control check-in.
• Database Management keeps track of database change scripts (i.e., DDL
  Data Definition Language
  A data definition language or data description language is a syntax similar to a computer programming language for defining data structures, especially database schemas.-History:...
  
  /DML
  Data Manipulation Language
  A data manipulation language is a family of syntax elements similar to a computer programming language used for inserting, deleting and updating data in a database...
  
   scripts) and manages the execution of change scripts against multiple instances of databases.
• Deployments and Deployment Plans define and execute the steps required to build and deploy software to different servers on different environments.
• Extensibility allows users to extend BuildMaster's functionality with the .NET-based API
  Application programming interface
  An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
  
  .
• Notifications are used to communicate with users (often via e-mail) to alert them of events in the system, such as a build or release being deployed, and notifications for required approvals.
• Security can be scoped, allowing privileges to be defined at application- and environment-levels; BuildMaster also supports LDAP-based authentication.
• Unit Testing - BuildMaster integrates with many unit testing frameworks including NUnit
  NUnit
  NUnit is an open source unit testing framework for Microsoft .NET. It serves the same purpose as JUnit does in the Java world, and is one of many in the xUnit family.- Example :Example of an NUnit test fixture:using NUnit.Framework; [TestFixture]...
  
  , JUnit
  JUnit
  JUnit is a unit testing framework for the Java programming language. JUnit has been important in the development of test-driven development, and is one of a family of unit testing frameworks collectively known as xUnit that originated with SUnit....
  
  , Gallio, and MSTest
  MSTest
  MSTest is a command line utility from Microsoft that executes unit tests created in Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2010....
  
  .