About three months ago, I had the great opportunity to spend some time with Successful Software as he went through a full review of Hericus Software and Zed Builds and Bugs. Andy took a look at the business, the product, and the marketing efforts we are doing and gave some very useful course corrections that we have implemented. After the review was done, Andy asked for a testimonial, and it's been three months now since the review - so where's the testimonal?

Well, the truth is that one of the things I like most about Andy's blog is the way that he will present a story or a scenario, and then back it all up with numbers, statistics, and real data that support his claims. To be true to this theme, I wanted to wait with the testimonial until such time as I could provide data to support my statements.

The basis of our request for Andy's help was to find the areas where we needed to focus our attention so that we can get more exposure in the marketplace, and more knowledge about our product in general. Secondary to that was to also get some direct and pointed feedback about the product itself and day to day usage of the product. The following table gives a summary of the success we have had since implementing the suggestions, and focusing our attention on the marketing of Zed Builds and Bugs:

Category		Change Post-Andy
Website Visitors		10% Increase
Trial Downloads		200% Increase
Google Organic Search Hits		320% Increase
Google Adwords Conversions		Previously we were not tracking this key metric. Now we can see that 75% of our downloads come from Google Adwords Conversions
Visitor Time Spent on Website		250% Increase

What stands out most to me in the above list is that even though our total web traffic has not increased substantially, our overall downloads, conversions, and time spend on the web site have increased significantly. That means that our efforts to focus our advertising and communicate correctly to our target markets is paying off. We're getting much more qualified leads coming to our web site, they are spending more time looking at the site and the product, and more of them are choosing to download the trial version.

And of course, all of that really doesn't mean much without looking at the final number that drives the business: Sales. At this point I am happy to report that in spite of the downturn in the economy, total sales dollars have doubled since this time last year.

Part of the changes that we have introduced is also an expansion of the free version of our software. It supports teams of up to 5 users, and still has all of the great features you'll find in the full product. Since Andy's audience typically tends towards micro-isv's and startups, I wanted to let everyone know that the product is available for you so that you can take advantage of organizing your software development, automate your builds, and track your bugs and all of your day-to-day tasks using Zed Builds and Bugs.

So thanks again, Andy, your feedback and suggestions were timely, useful, and ultimately profitable!

Zed Builds And Bugs

Zed Builds and Bugs Manager makes it easy to automate your eclipse builds today, but often the question comes up around just exactly what steps are required to accomplish this. There is a tutorial that we have included in the documentation for Zed that walks you through automating eclipse builds with Zed.

In general the tutorial shows you how to take an eclipse feature project along with the associated plugin projects that are included in the feature and use the eclipse built-in mechanisms to get the feature compiled, packaged, and ready for deployment as either a zipped package or a set of jars ready to deploy to an eclipse update site.

There are a number of different websitesfrom eclipse that will walk you through the details at a very low level for how to take advantage of the eclipse PDE build system and show you how to automate your builds within the eclipse and Ant framework. The issue with many of these guides is that they are either out of date, or they make the process too complicated.

With Zed Builds And Bugs Manager the process is actually very straightforward.

Prerequisites

In order to most easily fit into this process, it's beneficial to follow a few guidelines about creating plugins for eclipse:

• Create a Feature for your plugins. This is the best way to organize and give yourself a single starting point for your build.
• Manage your plugin dependencies properly. Use the eclipse plugin dependencies instead of hard-coding classpath settings, so that the eclipse build system will be able to auto-resolve your plugin build requirements.

Eclipse Tools & Variables

In this guide, we'll be using and making reference to the eclipse Ant Runner application that is provided with the base eclipse PDE installation. This is the key to running a "headless" eclipse that still knows how to manage plugins, analyze dependencies, and produce correct builds for your application.

The eclipse Ant Runner application is provided by the org.eclipse.equinox.launcher jar file, which will have a specific version depending on your eclipse installation. We recommend creating the following two build environment variables to help abstract the specifics of your eclipse version:

• EclipseHome Set this to the full path of your eclipse installation. e.g. c:\eclipse34
• EclipseLauncher Set this to the full path of your equinox launcher jar file. e.g. c:\eclipse34\plugins\org.eclipse.quinox.launcher_1.0.100.v20080509-1800.jar

We also recommend setting a variable to point to your java executable:

• JavaBinary Set this to the full path of your java executable: e.g. c:\jdk1.6.0_04\bin\java

Eclipse Ant commands for Features and Plugins

A careful read of the eclipse help on ant tasks will help you to understand the full power of the Ant Tasks that eclipse has contributed and are available when you use the AntRunner application from the equinox.launcher plugin. We're going to make use of these in order to get eclipse to help make our build process easier.

We'll be using the eclipse.buildScript target specifically to auto-generate all of the Ant build files that will be involved.

Example

A full example of the steps documented here can be found in the Hericus Online Demo Application. Reference the instructions on accessing the demo system for logon and link information. The demo system uses the eclipse Graphical Editor Framework to provide a simple example of all of the steps involved from source to packaged binaries.

Build Steps

• The first build step you will want to create will be one to check out your feature and all of the related plugins from your source control system. Refer to the Build Management How To guide for specifics on working with your version control system. Ensure that your feature and all of its plugins are checked out. You may use a flat structure (like your workspace layout), or the traditional features/, plugins/ directory structure if you like.
• The next step to create will be your standard Update Version Number In Source step. Search and replace through all of the plugin.xml and build.xml files in your project to ensure your build version number is correctly applied.
• Create a step that will create a simple ant build file that will be used to create all of the ant build.xml files for each of the features and plugins involved in your project. The ant build file should look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project name="buildBuildFiles" default="all" basedir=".">
        <target name="all">
                <eclipse.buildScript elements="feature@org.eclipse.gef"
                        buildDirectory="${WORKDIR}"
                        baseLocation="${EclipseHome}"
                />
        </target>
</project>

• Create a step that will run the newly created Ant build file with a command that should look like this:

 
java -cp ${EclipseLauncher} org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main -application org.eclipse.ant.core.antRunner -v -file ${WORKDIR}/genbuildxml.xml

• By default, eclipse will generate the build.xml files with some settings that you may want to change. Use the Zed Search & Replace feature to update any settings in the newly created build.xml files that you would like to change. We recommend setting the javacFailOnError setting to "true" instead of "false" so that you will know about errors in the build immediately.
• At this point, you are ready to run the actual build of your feature. Create a step that will run the clean and build.jars ant targets:

 
java -cp ${EclipseLauncher} org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main -application org.eclipse.ant.core.antRunner -v -file ${WORKDIR}/features/org.eclipse.gef-feature/build.xml clean build.jars

• The final build step will be to assemble your distribution zip file by using the zip.distribution ant target:

 
java -cp ${EclipseLauncher} org.eclipse.core.launcher.Main -application org.eclipse.ant.core.antRunner -v -file ${WORKDIR}/features/org.eclipse.gef-feature/build.xml zip.distribution

• At this point you may do anything else that your build requires. In our sample that you can find on the zed demo server we simply copy the zipped distribution file into the Status directory to make it available for download.

Comments

The eclipse ant build framework does include tasks that allow you to use the built in eclipse support for CVS to allow you to download your source code from a CVS repository. The disadvantage of this is that it won't support all types of source control management systems, like Perforce, ClearCase, etc. We recommend splitting this step out, even if you are using CVS, because it gives you better visibility into the steps that are performed by your build, and it gives you more flexibility over the underlying source control systems that you can incorporate.

As of August Hericus Software has introduced a new pricing model for Zed Builds and Bugs Manager. We've done this after a lot of thought and analysis in an effort to better serve our existing customers, and to also open the Zed platform to more software development groups that are interested in using Zed for continuous integration and task management within their group.

The new pricing model includes a tiered structure that follows the model of many existing Task and Bug management software applications on the market today. The idea is that as your team grows, Zed Builds and Bugs Manager will grow with you and continue to scale to meet your needs.

Unlike many others on the market today, however, the Zed pricing model includes an unlimited option for large teams so that you don't have to break the bank to use great software. Regardless of how large your team grows, you'll be able to use Zed to manage all of your continuous integration and task management activities.

The best feature of the new pricing model, in our opinion, is that the low end of the model (Free!) has been expanded. For teams up to 5 users, the main Zed server where your continuous integration builds are defined, and all of your tasks and bugs are tracked is free. Also lifted is the restriction on being able to use satellite servers with your free server. You'll have to pay for a satellite build server license, but that's it.

Also introduced, and heavily influenced by Balsamiq.com is our availability of free licenses of the server for do-gooders:

• If you are a do-gooder of any sort (non-profit, charity, you get the idea), email us with a short blurb and we'll send you a license, FREE of charge.
• If you are a technical/software blogger or journalist willing to write us up (honest reviews are the most useful to us) email us a short blurb with the link to your blog and we'll send you a license, FREE of charge, so that you can evaluate Zed Builds and Bugs properly.
• If you are willing to demo Zed Builds and Bugs to an audience of at least 15 people (at a user group, a conference, a BarCamp), email us your info and we'll give you two licenses, one for you to keep and one to give away at the event, FREE of charge.
• If you teach a high-school class, email us the name of your school and your class, plus the number of students in your class. We will send you a license that will cover you and all of your students so they can learn about continuous integration from the start.

Our existing customers tell us how much they like using Zed Builds and Bugs Manager, and we want to expand the experience to as many small groups as possible with the Free licenses. So, get in touch with us and we'll be happy to send you a free license for your organization, event, blog, or school!