Pipeline Runner

Pipeline Runner is a command line executable program for developers with an optional Graphical User Interface. The user can choose instead to use any text editor to create scripts, including building them within Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Notepad++, and even Notepad on Windows.

Pipeline Runner offers CI / CD functionality on desktop or server with a small install size, low resource usage, and free access for non-commercial use.

As the name suggests the Pipeline Runner tool is designed to run arbitrarily defined scripts through a notional pipeline (i.e. sequentially) and stop either on any failure or on successful completion of the entire script. So, for example, a user might want to write a script to automatically do the following in order:

•Build an Application and / or all related projects and solutions

•If the build is successful, run all available Unit, Integration and Regression tests

•If the tests all pass, protect the assemblies using your choice of protection tools.

•If the protection succeeds without error, build installers for each version of an application,

•If the installers all build successfully, compress them into zip archives

•If the archives are all created satisfactorily, upload them to a website

•If the archives all upload successfully, build automatic update information files

•If the automatic update information is generated successfully, upload it to the relevant website endpoint

•If the update information upload is successful, build a notification email

•If the script processing is successful, automatically send the email to users to notify them of the availability of a new update

•Send an email or SMS notification to specified people on completion, or if any error occurs during the process that causes it to stop.

This can turn a manual process that can take many hours into a single click BTD (Build, Test, Deploy) pipeline process.

Scripts can be created using the Pipeline Runner Studio graphical tool, or by simply typing into a text file in Visual Studio, Notepad++, Notepad or your text editing tool of choice. The script syntax is so simple that it requires little if any study or training to use it.  For example, to delete a file you simply pass the path and file name to the DeleteFile command.  What could be easier?  I bet you can already guess what you do to Move a file, Rename a file, Rename a Directory, Create a Directory, and so on?  I thought so - simple, isn't it?

However, if you have the Pro version you can do some things that require a little more knowledge, such as writing and executing C# code within your script. Even so, if you can program already it will still be really simple for you compared to learning an entire new language as required by some other products.