Compare artifact with previous artifacts?

[jvelapol]

I have a scenario where a build generates a scoring number (in our case, it's a code coverage percentage).  We'd like to consider having a check in a build to compare that coverage with the previous build (immediately previous build) and make decisions about that (flag a warning message, notify someone, fail the build, something like that) based on the results of that.

It gets hairy once we start talking about branched builds too (just what is the previous build/artifacts, for example), but it's possible we may only require that on certain branches.

[kiran jonnalagadda]

I suggest using a script task, to be clear write a script using script task with below steps

• grab previous coverage percentage,
• execute your calculations and
• fail/success build. 

[jvelapol]

Hrm.  The hard part is the first bullet there: I'd need to store that somewhere that could be easily referenced, plus I'd have to have a lot of logic in the script to figure out what is the previous percentage (which build, on which branch, from where), plus how do you determine previous without having to parse a ton of git logs/shasums to guesstimate it)

Maybe store as an artifact, but how to access a previous build's artifacts (assuming you can guess what the "previous build" was).