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Concepts

Licensing & tiers

ALbuild follows a simple, transparent model: the complete build toolchain is free of license, and you pay only when you need the premium deployment features.

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Free of license

The entire build, compile, test, sign and packaging toolchain is free: no license key, no trial clock, no per-run charge.

Included:

• All build tasks / cmdlets: Get BC Artifact, Create BC Container / Container User, Remove BC Container, Resolve Dependencies (NuGet, Universal Packages and local .app files), Get Universal Package, Import Configuration Package, Install 365 business development app(s), Install Test Toolkit, Compile App, Sign App, Publish & Install App, Run Tests, Publish Testiny Results, Stamp Build Version, and Check Translations.
• Publish NuGet Package to Azure Artifacts or any NuGet v3 feed.
• All ALbuild V1 legacy tasks, for backward compatibility.
• The local pipeline runner (Invoke-ALbuildPipeline).
• The pipeline templates.
• Standard support through the 365 business development Service Desk.

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Licensed features

The following deployment features require a subscription. A free trial is available so you can evaluate them before subscribing.

Enforcement is grouped into five licensed feature areas. Every cmdlet below calls Assert-ALbuildLicensed on entry with the feature named in the first column.

You can check the current state programmatically with Test-ALbuildLicense and assert it with Assert-ALbuildLicensed.

The trial starts itself

You do not request a trial. The first time a licensed feature runs in an Azure DevOps organization that has no registration yet, ALbuild registers a 30-day trial automatically and then re-verifies, so the run proceeds. Licenses are keyed to the Azure DevOps collection, so the trial belongs to the organization, not to a user or a pipeline.

When the trial expires the service still answers "ok", with a past end date, and Assert-ALbuildLicensed is what turns that into a clear failure.

When the licensing service is unreachable

Two mechanisms keep a build from failing because of a network problem:

• Grace window. A previously verified license keeps working for LicenseGraceDays days (default 14) while the service cannot be reached. This applies only to network failures. An explicit invalid or expired answer from the service is never graced. Set the window with Set-ALbuildConfig; 0 disables the grace cache.
• Offline key. For a trusted agent that can never reach the service, for example a self-hosted agent inside a locked-down customer network, set ALBUILD_LICENSE_KEY as a secret variable on that agent. Its presence authorises the licensed features without contacting the service at all.

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Plans (Azure DevOps extension)

All plans include every free-of-license task plus the full set of licensed deployment tasks, the pipeline templates, and standard support.

Need more than 5 repositories? Combine multiple Per 5 Repositories subscriptions, or move up to the Per DevOps Project or Per DevOps Organization plan for unlimited repositories.

To get started, visit 365businessdev.com.