Google wants to make it easier to package software and work with containers. The company has announced the Google Cloud Container Builder, a standalone tool designed to build container images no matter the deployment environment.
Features allows users to build source and package build artifacts into Docker containers; debug failed builds; view a permanent audit record; build from Google Cloud Source repositories; upload source to Google Cloud Storage, GitHub or Bitbucket; integrate with an IDE or existing CI or CD pipeline; set up branch and tag rules; and customize build steps.
“This helps empower a tighter release process for teams, more reliable build environments across workspaces, and frees you from having to manage your own scalable infrastructure for running builds,” wrote David Bendory, tech lead and software engineer, and Christopher Sanson, product manager on the Google Cloud Container builder team, in a blog post.
MongoDB announces free tier for MongoDB Atlas
MongoDB is providing easier access to its database-as-a-service solution, Atlas. The company announced a new free tier and live migration tool for it. The new MO tier is a free cluster that allows users to learn or build a prototype using MongoDB. It features security, availability and managed upgrades.
In addition, Atlas now features MongoMirror, a solution that automates the migration process. MongoMirror can live-migrate data to MongoDB from pre-existing MongoDB sets.
Google introduces XLA
Google is providing a new compiler for its deep learning solution TensorFlow. Accelerated Linear Algebra (XLA) is designed to improve speed, memory, usage and portability on servers and mobile platforms.
“XLA uses JIT compilation techniques to analyze the TensorFlow graph created by the user at runtime, specialize it for the actual runtime dimensions and types, fuse multiple ops together, and emit efficient native machine code for them—for devices like CPUs, GPUs and custom accelerators,” the XLA and TensorFlow team wrote in a blog post.
According to the company, XLA is still in its early development stages.
SmartBear releases new version of Collaborator
SmartBear is updating its peer code and document-review tool Collaborator to integrate with the top three repository-management solutions. The update features a new integration with GitLab, and adds onto its existing integrations with Altassian’s Bitbucket and GitHub.
“More teams are looking for solutions that allow them to extend the code review capabilities that are offered in GitHub, Bitbucket and GitLab,” said Justin Collier, product owner for Collaborator at SmartBear. “Collaborator is a tool purposely built to help teams achieve this. Organizations have always seen document review as a priority for improving their final deliverables; however, many teams are still reviewing documents using Microsoft Word’s track changes and comments feature. Though great for two people to collaborate, it becomes much more cumbersome as additional people are added to an e-mail chain. Collaborator 11.0 delivers enhancements that allow easy document review for the entire team.”
Other features include new pan, zoom and scroll features to improve to the solution’s document-review capabilities.
