Including Flare in a Automated Build scenario - don't!

[owensmn]

Hi
If your Flare build process is performed on a VM and that VM is regularly rebooted, don't include Flare in your automation, unless you are prepared to regularly manually reactivate after seeing your jobs fail!

We're a large Flare user, lots of technical writers using Flare in their laptops, several servers running Flare builds, and a MadCap Central license.

Our build machines run on VMs. The jobs on them regularly fail because Flare in deemed to be inactivated, even though it was activated on the same machine the previous day. Apparently the hardware used by VMs can change from day to day and because Flare cannot cope with this, it thinks your copy of Flare is inactivated. Poor!

Flare provides a special build license, which you can imagine would be ideal for building Flare projects from the command line, on a server, maybe as part of a build automation process.

Can someone from Flare can explain why this specific build license version of Flare is missing an automated method for re-activating? I know such a tool exists, I can't understand why it's not shipped with this version of Flare...

Best Regards
Mark

[AlexFox]

Sounds like a nightmare... is the special build licence a floating licence? Or something cheaper that can only use madbuild.exe?

If it isn't a floating licence I'd ask for one of those as that isn't machine bound, it just looks to see if a machine is currently using it like a seat allocation.

[owensmn]

No - my understanding is the build license is a normal license in respect that it needs a license key to use it.
The floating license is more expensive (I believe) and given our large Flare usage and all the maintenance fees etc. I think we've spent enough with Flare.