[ANN] AnthillPro 2.5 Build Management Server Released

[Urbancode]

Cleveland, OH - November 29, 2005 - Urbancode, Inc. is proud to announce the
release of version 2.5 of Anthill Pro, their pioneering, award-winning Build
Management server software. This new version includes a host of upgrades to
Anthill Pro's repository drivers and user interface, and comes bundled with
Ant 1.6.4.

Urbancode president Maciej Zawadzki is excited about the continual evolution
of his pioneering product and the marketplace he played a large part in
creating. "It seems that every few months brings new players to the Build
Management arena, and Urbancode is dedicated to staying out front and ahead
of the competition, for both our existing customers and new ones as well.
Anthill Pro 2.5 accomplishes just that."

Build Management, as delivered by Anthill Pro, is a process that alleviates
human resources from the mistake-prone drudgery of performing complex and
lengthy software builds, thus allowing them to spend their time more
efficiently. In its most simplified form, Anthill Pro will, according to
your schedule, automatically check out code from the repository of your
choice, build the code using the builder and environment of your choice,
version and label the software according to your scheme, and publish the
build artifacts to the location of your choosing, all the while informing
all interested parties of build results via email. However, Anthill Pro can
scale to meet any development initiative, including managing dependencies.

Anthill Pro 2.5's myriad improvements to the repository drivers set
highlights a major competitive advantage of Urbancode's over their
competition - customer service. "We are totally dedicated to customer
service," says Zawadzki, "and there many ways to accomplish this. Besides
rapid response times to service calls and active participation in our user
forums, we also address user-identified issues in short order. We are
totally focused on seamless operation for our customers."

To that end, Anthill Pro 2.5 boasts improvements to its PVCS, ClearCase,
Visual SourceSafe, Subversion, Perforce, CVS, BitKeeper, and StarTeam
drivers. "Most of the driver improvements are based on customer-based
requests. When you buy Anthill Pro, you become part of our community and you
can participate in the process of improvement," says Zawadzki. "Furthermore,
Anthill has been around since 2001 and has many more customers than anyone
else in the market, so our community is the biggest and has the most to
offer. Chances are, if you experience a problem, someone has already
addressed it."

It should be noted that Urbancode uses Anthill Pro for all their development
work; not a small point because they are able to identify problems often
long before the customers do. One area in particular in which they excel at
this is the user interface. Zawadzki says, "We use Anthill Pro all day,
every day, and we are constantly identifying and implementing improvements
to the look and feel of the product."

Finally, Anthill Pro 2.5 now comes bundled with Ant 1.6.4, however Zawadzki
is quick to point out that the bundling is for convenience only. "Ant 1.6.4
is bundled so that if you don't feel like downloading and installing Ant,
you don't have to, but Anthill Pro is designed to support many versions of
Ant concurrently and allows customers to set up their own Ant
Configurations. Each project in Anthill Pro could potentially use a
different version of Ant."

Download a fully-functional 30-day trial edition of Anthill Pro 2.5 at
http://www.urbancode.com/products/anthillpro

###

Urbancode, Inc., founded in 1995, is based in Cleveland, Ohio and
specializes in development tools and large-scale software projects. Please
contact Maciej Zawadzki (MAH-chay zuh-VAHD-ski) for more information:

Urbancode, Inc.
2044 Euclid Ave, Suite 600
Cleveland, OH 44115
(216) 858-9000
(216) 858-9602 fax
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Roedy Green]

Cleveland, OH - November 29, 2005 - Urbancode, Inc. is proud to announce the
release of version 2.5 of Anthill Pro, their pioneering, award-winning Build
Management server software. This new version includes a host of upgrades to
Anthill Pro's repository drivers and user interface, and comes bundled with
Ant 1.6.4.

A lot of words. I take it what this thing does is let you hook up to a
variety of version control systems through ANT.

 

[irvkatz]

< 600 words is a lot of words?!?

Regardless, you are incorrect. Please RTFA.

 

[Roedy Green]

< 600 words is a lot of words?!?

Regardless, you are incorrect. Please RTFA.

600 words is a lot of words to announce a product and still not
explain what it FOR . It is up to the person posting an announcement
to make it clear to even casual reader what the product is used for.
People should not have to chase links to read manuals just to find out
if the product is potentially of any use.

 

[Roedy Green]

NO! I hane read the fool announcement TWICE that is twice what it
should require. It is up to the author to be clear and get to the
point and not shovel meaningless sales crap down unwilling throats.

 

[Jeffrey Schwab]

NO! I hane read the fool announcement TWICE that is twice what it
should require. It is up to the author to be clear and get to the
point and not shovel meaningless sales crap down unwilling throats.

Rough day?

 

[irvkatz]

Yo, Roedy, you cannot be serious. There is no way that you read the
thing. Look at the THIRD freaking paragraph (OMG, not the THIRD whole
paragraph):

"Build Management, as delivered by Anthill Pro, is a process that
alleviates human resources from the mistake-prone drudgery of
performing complex and lengthy software builds, thus allowing them to
spend their time more efficiently. In its most simplified form, Anthill
Pro will, according to your schedule, automatically check out code from
the repository of your choice, build the code using the builder and
environment of your choice, version and label the software according to
your scheme, and publish the build artifacts to the location of your
choosing, all the while informing all interested parties of build
results via email. However, Anthill Pro can scale to meet any
development initiative, including managing dependencies."

OK, NOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT DOES?

 

[Chris Uppal]

"Build Management, as delivered by Anthill Pro, is a process that
alleviates human resources from the mistake-prone drudgery of
performing complex and lengthy software builds, thus allowing them to
spend their time more efficiently. In its most simplified form, Anthill
Pro will, according to your schedule, automatically [...]

OK, NOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT DOES?

AT ABOUT THE POINT I'VE ELIDED I STOPPED READING. AGAIN.

Learn to communicate. Learn to keep to the point. Learn to focus on what your
audience want to know.

And for ****'s sake learn to STOP SHOUTING.

-- chris

 

[Roedy Green]

"Build Management, as delivered by Anthill Pro, is a process that
alleviates human resources from the mistake-prone drudgery

SALES CRAP.

 

[Roedy Green]

"Build Management, as delivered by Anthill Pro, is a process that
alleviates human resources from the mistake-prone drudgery of
performing complex and lengthy software builds, thus allowing them to
spend their time more efficiently. In its most simplified form, Anthill
Pro will, according to your schedule, automatically check out code from
the repository of your choice, build the code using the builder and
environment of your choice, version and label the software according to
your scheme, and publish the build artifacts to the location of your
choosing, all the while informing all interested parties of build
results via email. However, Anthill Pro can scale to meet any
development initiative, including managing dependencies."

OK, NOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT DOES?

No.

It is no more informative than the commercials for the fictitious
product VIP that Doris Day spoofed.

 

[Chris Smith]

No.

It is no more informative than the commercials for the fictitious
product VIP that Doris Day spoofed.

Actually, if you skip the first and last sentences of that paragraph,
the rest of it actually does explain what the product does. Too bad
most people will do the opposite and actually read the first (extremely
long) paragraph and stop reading before they get to the real
explanation.

FYI, Anthill is a continuous integration tool. It runs in the
background, periodically builds the latest code from CVS, and looks for
errors or test failures. Another similar product is CruiseControl.

--
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 

[Roedy Green]

it actually does explain what the product does.

In what language?

In its most simplified form, Anthill
Pro will, according to your schedule, automatically check out code
from the repository of your choice, build the code using the builder
and environment of your choice, version and label the software
according to your scheme, and publish the build artifacts to the
location of your choosing, all the while informing all interested
parties of build results via email.

"publish the build artifacts" -- GET REAL!. What that mean is it will
copy the executable files. WHOOPEE.

The announcement should have said:

On schedule, Anthill Pro checks out a project from any version
control repository, and invokes a build. It is not a build tool
itself; it uses your existing build tool. It optionally sends emails
when it is done.