Automatic build of customizations

[tstacy]

I would like to set up an automatic build of our customizations as our developers make changes.

With Windchill 9.1 and earlier, we had a PTC consultant on location so we were able to use their BIF (Build and Install Framework) to automatically build and deploy changes. We set this up to run nightly using CruiseControl and running a script that checks for new entries in ClearCase, builds the codebase on one VM (against an ootb Windchill installation), deploys and installs the distribution on another VM (also starting with an ootb Windchill installation), then loads all of the entries specified in the compdef.xml files that BIF uses to load our soft types, IBAs, etc. With our Windchill 10.2 development, we do not have a PTC consultant on location and therefore do not have authority to use BIF.

What I'm looking for is any ideas as to how we can facilitate an automatic build, deploy, load of our customizations for Windchill 10.2. We have a license for CruiseControl to run scripts automatically. We use ClearCase for our source code control. Any thoughts or suggestions?

[SimonHeath]

Dear Theresa,

I was interested in your question, we are a specialized Windchill customization/extension company and we have spent two years developing our custom build and install process for Windchill. We have decided a long time ago to move away from the monolithic approach (like BiF) and using VMs and move to an apps idea, where we work in a much more distributed way which has been very sucessful. One thing we noticed early on is that a dev environment for customization is not the same as the classic software development model and we adapted our processes to adjust to that. The concept of one build for a lot of often disconnected pieces of code never made sense to us.

FYI - We use Jira, Ant, SVN and OpenOffice server and as tools within our build process

BR

Simon