5 New Add-ons to Boost Dev Tools – Second Quarter 2017
As usual, we have reviewed all new products for Bitbucket and Bamboo for the past quarter and would like to share five add-ons that we liked the most. This summer is a hot season on the Atlassian Marketplace with Atlassian Codegeist Hackathon 2017 inviting developers to create the next great add-on for one of the Atlassian platforms. While waiting for the news about hackathon winners, let’s see what new add-ons for Atlassian Dev Tools on the Marketplace won our appreciation.
Check out the previous post in this series if you missed it.
Top 5 new add-ons for Bitbucket and Bamboo released in the second quarter of 2017:
- LFS Converter for Bitbucket Server by TMate Software
- Watching favorite files by vshevchenko
- File Viewer for Bitbucket Server by StiltSoft
- Build Comments task for Bamboo by Cintia DR
- Bamboo Announcement Plugin by Atlassian Labs
LFS Converter for Bitbucket Server
This tool allows you to transfer files to Large File Storage (LFS). If you don’t use LFS, you can experience performance issues while working in a repository with large binary files, such as video, audio, graphics, large data sets. In addition, cloning such a repository means downloading data that weighs a lot. With LFS, large files are replaced with text pointers inside Git and the file contents is stored on a remote server.
LFS Converter for Bitbucket Server lets you scan a repository for large files in repository settings and transfer the selected files to LFS.
You can track the history of transfers and revert the last transfer.
Pricing: LFS Converter for Bitbucket Server is available for Bitbucket Server. Its commercial license costs 245$ for 25 users; 495$ for 50 users; 1,500$ for 100 users. Try it
Watching favorite files
You can try this add-on if you have large projects with a lot of activity and you need to be aware of only a part of it. ‘Watching favorite files’ helps you tune Bitbucket notifications and get notified on changes only in those files that are important for you. To make it work, you need to add yourself to the watchers list of files and directories of your choice. After you do that, you will start receiving only those notifications, which mention files that you watch.
You get to choose how to be notified – via email or Slack. And each user can see and manage the list of files they watch in a user profile.
Pricing: Watching favorite files is available for Bitbucket Server and is free at the moment. Try it
File Viewer for Bitbucket Server
Even though this add-on is developed by our team, we are not being biased by including it in this review. We believe it’s a really useful tool for many of Bitbucket users.
File Viewer enables viewing 3D models, geographic data structures, PDF and CSV files directly in Bitbucket without downloading.
Included viewers:
- 3D Viewer – STL files are rendered as interactive 3D models
- Map Viewer – GeoJSON files are shown as maps that you can zoom
- Table Viewer – CSV and TSV files are presented as tables with sorting by column
- PDF Viewer – PDF files can be viewed on your Bitbucket pages
The add-on doesn’t need to be configured. You can start using the viewers right after installing the add-on.
To view a file in Bitbucket:
- Navigate to the Source section on the left-hand sidebar in your repository
- Select a file you would like to view in Bitbucket
- If the format of a selected file is supported by File Viewer, the file will automatically be displayed in a suitable viewer
Pricing: File Viewer for Bitbucket is available for Bitbucket Server and Cloud. The Server commercial license costs 75$ for 25 users; 150$ for 50 users; 300$ for 100 users. The Cloud version of this add-on was released earlier, in 2015 (it is a winner of Atlassian Codegeist 2015 – Best Bitbucket add-on), and is free at the moment. Try it
Build Comments task for Bamboo
This add-on adds a Bamboo task that makes it possible to automate posting of comments to builds or releases. You can configure the contents of a comment that needs to be added. Besides text, you can use Bamboo variables.
For example, you can configure a task that will automatically add a comment to build’s results in case a build fails. This comment will tell what agent was used and what its working directory is. It will save you time – you won’t need to look for these details in logs.
Here’s the value for the Comment filed to configure such a task:
Build failed on ${bamboo.agentId} and it’s working directory is ${bamboo.agentWorkingDirectory}
Pricing: Build Comments task for Bamboo is available for Bamboo Server and is free at the moment. Try it
Bamboo Announcement Plugin
It’s a simple, but handy solution that adds a site-wide announcement banner in Bamboo. The message is customized by an administrator and displayed on the top of each page.
You can use it to inform about a coming maintenance, some important update, etc.
Pricing: Bamboo Announcement Plugin is available for Bamboo Server and is free at the moment. Try it
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