METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR APPLICATION BUILDING USING BUILD STYLES

• US 20110289480A1
• Filed: 08/01/2011
• Published: 11/24/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 02/28/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Anders Bertelrud, Christian Molick, John Graziano, Mike Ferris
• Original Assignee: Anders Bertelrud, Christian Molick, John Graziano, Mike Ferris
• Inventors: Graziano, John, Bertelrud, Anders, Molick, Christian, Ferris, Mike
• Granted Patent: US 8,527,937 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/123
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/71 Version control security arrangements therefor G06F21/57; Configuration management

Abstract

A method of building a software product in an integrated development environment using build styles. The method includes 1) applying a plurality of build styles, each of the build styles comprising a dictionary of build settings, to a target; 2) determining an order of precedence for the build styles and other dictionaries containing build settings; and 3) building a software product using said target and said build styles. The build settings within the build styles are capable of referring to other build settings and concatenating new values with previously defined values.

Claims

1-16. -16. (canceled)

17. A method of building a software product, the method comprising:

receiving a target setting comprising definitions for a plurality of build settings for directing a set of build applications to build the software product;

receiving a set of build styles comprising definitions for a set of build settings for directing the set of build applications to build the software product, the build styles in the set of build styles having an order of precedence that determines which build style provides a value of a particular build setting when two build styles have conflicting values for the particular build setting;

based on the order of precedence, searching the set of received build styles to identify a definition for each build setting; and

generating a final set of build settings for building the software product by applying the identified definition for each build setting to the target setting.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein said applying comprises overriding a value of an existing build setting defined in said target setting with a value of a build setting from the set of received build styles to generate the final set of build settings.

19. The method of claim 17, wherein said applying comprises adding a build setting from the set of received build styles to the final set of build settings.

20. The method of claim 17 further comprising:

when a definition of a particular build setting is received at a command line level, overriding a definition of the particular build setting in the final set of build settings with said command line received definition.

21. The method of claim 17, wherein each particular build setting comprises a definition of a particular attribute required to build said software products.

22. A non-transitory machine readable medium storing a program for building a software product, the program for execution by at least one processor, the program comprising sets of instructions for:

receiving a target setting comprising definitions for a plurality of build settings for directing a set of build applications to build the software product;

receiving a set of build styles comprising definitions for a set of build settings for directing the set of build applications to build the software product, the build styles in the set of build styles having an order of precedence that determines which build style provides a value of a particular build setting when two build styles have conflicting values for the particular build setting;

based on the order of precedence, searching the set of received build styles to identify a definition for each build setting; and

generating a final set of build settings for building the software product by applying the identified definition for each build setting to the target setting.

23. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 22, wherein the set of instructions for applying comprises a set of instructions for overriding a value of an existing build setting defined in said target setting with a value of a build setting from the set of received build styles to generate the final set of build settings.

24. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 22, wherein the set of instructions for applying comprises a set of instructions for adding a build setting from the set of received build styles to the final set of build settings.

25. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 22, wherein the program further comprises a set of instructions for:

when a definition of a particular build setting is received at a command line level, overriding a definition of the particular build setting in the final set of build settings with said command line received definition.

26. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 22, wherein each particular build setting comprises a definition of a particular attribute required to build said software products.

27. A method of building a software product, the method comprising:

receiving a target setting comprising definitions for a plurality of build settings for directing a set of build applications to build the software product;

receiving a set of build styles from a plurality of build styles, each build style comprising definitions for a set of build settings for directing the set of build applications to build the software product, wherein at least a first received build style inherits from a second build style that is not included in said set of received build styles;

searching said set of received build styles to identify a definition for a particular build setting, searching the first build style comprising automatically retrieving the second build style to search for a definition for the particular build setting based on an inheritance relationship between the first and second build styles; and

generating a final set of build settings for building the software product by adding the particular build setting to the target setting when the particular build setting is not defined in the target setting.

28. The method of claim 27, wherein each particular build setting comprises a definition of a particular attribute required to build said software products.

29. The method of claim 28, wherein said definition comprises a key-value pair.

30. The method of claim 29, wherein the key comprises a name of said particular build setting.

31. The method of claim 29, wherein the value comprises literal strings.

32. The method of claim 29, wherein said value comprises at least one reference to another build setting.

33. The method of claim 29, wherein said definition further comprises an operator.

34. The method of claim 33, wherein the operator is one of a concatenation and direct mapping.