Build licenses

A build license allows you to run full, incremental, or partial command-line-based analysis jobs for supported languages before loading the results to the Validate Server database. It is used for centralized production of analysis results, such as CI/CD systems.

Build licenses can be fixed or floating. To mix fixed and floating build licenses in your license pool, you must reserve licenses specifically for the fixed build hosts.

Fixed build licenses

A fixed (node locked) build license is required to install and run analysis on a dedicated build server machine. The license is locked to the machine for a locking period of two weeks.

This is usually required for a single project group with a specific build machine.

Floating build licenses

A floating (concurrent) build license is used with provisioned build systems (such as Perforce Puppet) where the build agent VMs or containers are created through the CI/CD pipeline and destroyed at the end of the process. Each new pipeline uses a new machine ID; therefore, floating licenses count how many jobs are running concurrently at any given time. For example:

• One floating build license allows one analysis job to run at any given time.
• Two floating build licenses allows two analysis jobs to run at any given time.

Tools that use a build license

• Kwadmin and validate admin (when loading analysis)
• Kwbuildproject
• Kwciagent