Stages
A stage contains a series of Actions to be executed and represents one step in the workflow process of a Configuration. Each Stage has Stage Options which define a list of conditions which must be met before the Stage can execute. For example, a requirement for a stage might be that the Agent it runs on must have a .NET version of 4.0 or later. Stage Options also allow the user to specify if the stage needs source code to run or if it automatically continues to the next stage. Stages also have Stage Gates which are a list of condition executed after the stage has run. If all stage gate conditions are met then the next stage will execute. Continua comes with default stage gate conditions which can be summarized as "Continue to the next Stage if there were no Failed or Error'ed Unit Tests".
Actions
An Action is a single step within a Stage that usually performs a very simple task. Most Actions in Continua act as a wrapper around an executable provided by the user. The build-in actions in Continua range from the advanced like MSBuild, FinalBuilder and Ant to simple ones like copying or deleting a file. Actions can also be of the flow control type which can be used to dictate the execution flow of that particular stage. For a full list of Actions see Actions Reference.