Semaphore, our hosted continuous integration service, is being continuously improved. Here are the highlights of what’s new since our last post.
Build environment improvements
We’ve upgraded our build environment, making PhantomJS, Java, Sphinx and Memcache, among others, available out of the box.
There’s a more complete list on our documentation site, and we know quite a few people who will benefit from PostgreSQL 9.1 and Firefox 13.
If you’re using MySQL or PostgreSQL, Semaphore now also exports some environment variables that make the database name, user and password available. You may use them if your build requires some custom scripting.
A better Solo plan
We’ve changed how our Solo plan works – from $9 with no collaborators to $14 and unlimited collaborators. While we’ve thought hard about pricing before we’ve announced it, it’s a learning process. Our goal for the future is to make pricing changes that will give our users even more bang for the buck.
Invite collaborators after adding a project
Semaphore knows about your collaborators from GitHub automatically. You can invite them while you’re adding your project, and when they sign up it is waiting for them on their dashboard.
Now we’re introducing a feature that lets you invite them from project settings as well:
This will be useful if you decide not to invite them while you’re adding a project to Semaphore.
HipChat notifications
As a project owner you can now set up Hipchat post-build notifications. The procedure is very similar to how Campfire works and what you’re used to if you’re a Hipchat user.
The road ahead
Beginning of an API, JRuby and post-build webhooks are just around the corner, as we move on to a live build log and even bigger things in our mission to make continuous integration a compelling experience for all developers. Watch this space or follow @semaphoreci for further updates.
