Continuous Integration for PowerBuilder

Automate your CI/CD workflow with an Automation Server

Using Jenkins for Continuous Integration with PowerBuilder

Jenkins is an automation server, meant to automate building, testing, and deploying tasks.

It helps implement Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery with your PowerBuilder applications. Examples of alternatives to Jenkins are GitLab and AzureDevops.

Creating a Continuous Integration Workflow (or Pipeline) with Jenkins requires configuring several consecutive jobs/tasks. Jenkins will trigger each task as specified - for instance when a new build is available - and provide feedback about its execution.

In some cases, a Jenkins plugin is available to simplify the integration/configuration of a given tool.

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STEP 1: Automated Build Generation with Jenkins

A Jenkins job can fetch the PowerBuilder code and the PBLs from GIT or SVN repositories.

Then, using PBAutoBuild, Jenkins can generate a PowerBuilder build.

If you are using PowerBuilder 2019 or 2017, please refer to this article to learn how to use the previous tool "PowerBuilder Compiler".

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STEP 2: Automated Code Inspection with Visual Expert & Jenkins

Jenkins can automate code inspections, either by calling Visual Expert in command line, or by using the Visual Expert Jenkins plugin.

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STEP 3: Automated Testing with AscentialTest & Jenkins

Jenkins can automate the tests of your PowerBuilder and PowerServer apps, either by calling AscentialTest in command line, or by using the AscentialTest Jenkins plugin.

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