Can TeamCity be configured to run personal compilations for specific agents?
We have a specific build configuration that is required to run a large number of personal builds without long delays. Can you single out specific agents just for running personal compilations? For example, if we have 5 agents, is it possible for all 5 to be able to run personal builds, but only 3 of them were triggered by a VCS trigger? The only way I can do this is to create 2 agent pools. The problem with this approach is that you need to specify specific projects for each pool, which would assume duplicate build configurations.
Personal builds are currently configured with a higher priority in the build queue, but this does not help prevent delays when all agents are running (slow) integration tests. Ideally, these integration tests will be queued until one of the 3 build agents that can run them is free. There are several workarounds to help mitigate the impact, it would be good to know if agents can actually be provisioned for remote assemblies.
We are using the latest version of TeamCity as of January 2013 which is 7.1.3.
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You can achieve this by specifying agent requirements. Select the option that distinguishes the 3 agents that you want to automatically start VCS from the other two agents. Add it as an agent requirement to every build configuration except the one you want to run for all 5 agents. This will limit the integration tests to three agents and free the remaining 2 agents to run only a configuration that requires many personal builds.
Also, your proposed agent pooling solution isn't too bad if you use build configuration templates.
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