Build management

The Builds page of Validate allows you to perform build management tasks such as:

  • view a list of builds for a selected project
  • filter the build list
  • rename builds (if you want to label a milestone build, for example)
  • delete builds
  • set up a build retention policy
  • view the build log

To access the builds page, click a project in the Project list and click Builds.

You can also use the Web API or the command-line tool validate admin for build management tasks.

Setting up a build retention policy

The space required to store integration build analysis data can grow very large over time. To save disk space, you can:

  • delete individual builds in Validate, with validate admin delete-build, or with the Web API
  • enable automatic build deletion

    In order to enable automatic build deletion, you need to have the Project admin role.

When you set a build retention policy, you set the number of builds to keep. By default, Validate keeps 20 builds. You can also prevent specific builds from being deleted; these builds are not included in the count of builds to keep. For example, if you set the threshold to keep 30 builds and also prevent 10 builds from being deleted, Validate will keep 40 builds.

If all builds are deleted from a project and its streams, historical citing information will be lost. Be sure to leave at least one build.

Automatically delete old builds

  1. Log in to Validate, if you haven't already done so.
  2. If you're not viewing the Projects list, click Projects at the top left.
  3. Click a project in the list. The project details are displayed.
  4. In the project details, click Builds.
  5. Select auto-delete old builds.
  6. You now see the default threshold setting.
  7. To change this number, click the pencil icon and enter another number.

The old builds you set to be deleted are automatically removed the next time you create a build.

You can also enable automatic build deletion with validate admin set-project-property. For example, to enable automatic build deletion for MyProject and keep the ten most recent builds:
validate admin set-project-property MyProject auto_delete_threshold 10

To turn off automatic build deletion with validate admin, pass a null value for auto_delete_threshold:

validate admin set-project-property MyProject auto_delete_threshold " "

Prevent a specific build from being deleted

When you enable automatic build deletion, you may want to prevent specific builds from being automatically deleted (for instance, iteration or milestone builds).

  1. If you're not viewing the Projects list, click Projects at the top left.
  2. Click a project in the list. The project details are displayed.
  3. In the project details, click Builds.
  4. Click the pencil icon to the left of the build.
  5. Select do not auto-delete this build.
You can also use the Web API to specify which builds to keep.