Working with Deployment Packages

As an Application Developer you create Deployment Packages to store a version of an Application.

Important! The actions that you can perform depend on your folder permissions, see: Folder Permissions.

This page includes the following:

Viewing Packages

The list of Packages gives you an overview of its properties, allows to edit them and to manage the Package state flow.

Package types are grouped into modules. The top navigation bar shows all modules. Within a module you can manage all packages with package types that belong to that module.

  1. Open the Release Automation perspective and click the Packages tab.
  2. Double-click a Package to open it.

System administrators can configure the Packages list to display:

From this list you can:

Additionally, you can access the list of Packages of an Application by expanding the Packages tab of an Application and selecting All Packages.

Tip: For more information about how to search for entities and narrow down the results, see: Global Search

Viewing Package Installations

As an Application Developer or Release Manager, you use the Installations list to track the installation status of an Application. This view provides an overview of the Components that are installed on the Deployment Targets, the Artifacts deployed (if any), and the Package used for the deployment.

Viewing Installations

  1. Open the Release Automation perspective.
  2. Click the Packages tab.
  3. Right-click a Package and select Installations.

Installations List

The view presents the following columns:

Custom Views

You can define custom views for Packages as described in the Custom Views section.

Creating Packages

  1. Click Packages in the main navigation menu.
  2. Click Create in the toolbar.
  3. Fill out the Create Item dialog. Take the following into account:
    • The Name of the Package must be unique within the Application and can only contain alphanumeric characters, blanks, ., -, _, @, $, #.
    • The Type cannot be changed after creation.
    • If the Package is of type deployment you must select an Application.
    • Optionally, select a default Artifact that will be assigned to all Components.
    • You can select the current user or one of the user groups the user belongs to as owner (or one of all active user groups for administrators). To assign a different user, edit the entity after creating it.
  4. Click Create.

Notes:

Editing the Properties of Packages

You can change the following properties:

Defining Dynamic Properties

If the Package is of type Deployment, dynamic properties can be defined on it. For Delivery Packages this menu item is not shown. See Working with Dynamic Properties for details.

You can also search for dynamic properties using the Global Search.

Duplicating Packages

Take the following into account when duplicating Packages:

To Duplicate Packages

  1. Click the Duplicate button in the toolbar.
  2. Optionally, enter a new name for the Package. It can only contain alphanumeric characters, blanks, ., -, _, @, $, #".
  3. Select a destination folder.
  4. Assign an owner for the new Package.

    Note: The owner of the original Package is selected by default.

  5. Select the Patches Package checkbox if the duplicate Package has to be installed on top of another Package. See Working with Patches for more information.
  6. Enter a name for the patch. For example, ARA-12.2-Build-1.
  7. Optionally, select an Artifact to be assigned by default to all Components in the Package.

Notes:

Deleting Packages

Note: You may only delete the entity when you have the appropriate permission on the containing folder (see Security Concept) and all of the listed conditions are met.

Conditions to delete entities of type Package

Important! The DB-Cleanup tool deletes Executions and Installation records, regardless of the installation status. To ensure that all Executions have been deleted, select the following parameters when running the tool:

Installation Records can be also deleted by executing a Workflow of type Uninstall. It is not possible to delete single Installation records.

Assigning Artifacts to Package Components

  1. Open a Package and click the Components tab.
  2. Click the Select Artifact inline button on the right side of the page.
  3. Select the Artifact that you want to assign to the Package Component.

    Important!

    • Only Artifacts which have been already assigned to a Component are displayed.
    • The latest Artifact assigned to a Component on which the user has the required permissions will be auto-assigned to a Package during creation.
  4. Click OK.

Naming Conventions

Deployment Packages are used to define which version of an Application is being deployed to an environment. The package name will depend on various organizational requirements. For Packages, there is not a unique way for naming conventions. Most important is that the package name has to be unique and meet your requirements for versioning, auditing and build standards.

When defining the naming conventions for packages, semantic versioning is a good starting point. Semantic Versioning is a standard that follows the format of x.y.z, where:

In line with this the basic package would look like the following: Major.Minor.Patch.

A basic package would look like the following then:

Requirements may be different at your company. If this is the case, consider the following aspects to define naming conventions for your packages:

Some other aspects to consider when defining your package naming conventions are:

The following table summarizes acceptable naming standards for this entity: