Stages
Stages are a mechanism in Continua CI that allows you to break apart your build process into multiple steps. Each configuration can contain multiple stages and each stage contains the individual actions that run during the build (see figures 1 and 2 for more details).
Stages can be set to either automatically continue on to the next stage or wait for user confirmation.
When a stage is run, its Workspace and Repository rules are automatically fired. These rules determine which files are transferred between the server and agent, and which files are transferred between the repository and agent respectively. For more information, view the Workspace Rules and Repository Rules pages.
Stage Gates
Stage gates are coupled with stages and act as a road block after the completion of each stage. Stage gates allow you to define a list of conditions that must be met after that stage has finished. The build will only continue if these conditions are met. For example, if you have a test stage that runs tests on your compiled project then you can set the test stage gate to only continue the build if all tests completed successfully.
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 action is a single step within a Stage stage that usually performs a very simple task. Most Actions in Continua These actions are the steps that actually perform your build process. Most actions in continua CI act as a wrapper around an executable provided by the user. The buildbuilt-in actions in Continua CI range from the advanced actions like MSBuild, FinalBuilder and Ant to simple ones actions 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 actions see Actions Reference.
Figure 1. Relationship between Configurations, Stages and Actions.
Figure 2. Example Build Stages
