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Deployment Plans

Once a build has been promoted to an environment, its Deployment Plan may be executed for that environment. Because applications exist in multiple environments, each an application will have a different deployment plan for each environment it participates in.

A Deployment Plan describes the steps necessary to deploy an application to an environment. Regardless of their technology, platform, or purpose, all software applications are deployed to a target environment in the same manner:

1. Source Preparation – the various source files required for compilation of the application are consolidated from different repositories (source control, file systems, etc) into a central location.
2. Compilation – the source files are transformed into the application files, which could involve compiling source code to executables, compressing files into more manageable files, etc.
3. Shutdown – the currently running application is stopped in the target environment; this could involve shutting down a service/daemon or stopping an application server.
4. Installation – the application files created in the Compilation step are installed in the appropriate folders on the target server(s).
5. Start-up – with the new files in place, the application is restarted.

In BuildMaster, each plan consists of one or more Action Groups, each which consist of one or more Actions. An Action represents a discrete step – getting latest from source control, compiling an executable, transferring files to a different folder, etc – that is required in order to deploy.