BuildForge Help

How the System Applies Environments to Steps

This section describes how the system applies environments.

Before the system executes a step, it applies all the relevant environments for the step, to create the step environment. It evaluates server, project, and step environments, in that order. This has the following ramifications:

For example, if the variable X is defined with the standard Assign As action, but with different values, for a server, project, and step, the step environment wins, because it is the last one applied. However, if the project uses the Assign If Not Assigned action, then its value is ignored, and if the step uses the Append Existing action, then the final result becomes the combination of the server and step values.

For example, if you launch a project with a project environment named Java that includes a variable JavaVersion = 1.4, and you edit the value to 1.5, any steps that use the default environment get the value 1.5, while any steps that reference the Java environment specifically get the original value of 1.4.

Note that when the system starts a job, it copies the project environment variables to a database record set aside for the job, and refers to this job environment thereafter when getting project default values. If the user modifies the starting values of any project variables when the user starts the job, those values are what is recorded in the job record.

Related concepts
Step Properties