Patent ID: 8219977

Claim:
A method of testing software, the method comprising: maintaining a cache within at least one of a plurality of farm machines of a testing farm, wherein each cache comprises at least one version of test ingredients; receiving, within at least one selected farm machine, a request to perform a software test using a test version of the test ingredients; wherein the request specifies a primary attribute and a secondary attribute for the test version of the test ingredients; wherein the test version of the test ingredients is implemented as a directory tree; wherein the primary attribute is hierarchically related to the secondary attribute, the primary attribute is a branch attribute of a software repository, and the secondary attribute is a revision attribute of the software repository; determining whether the test version of the test ingredients specified by the request is related to the at least one version of the test ingredients stored within the cache of the selected farm machine by comparing the primary attribute and the secondary attribute specified by the request with a primary attribute and a secondary attribute of the at least one version of the test ingredients stored within the cache of the selected farm machine; wherein the at least one version of the test ingredients is related to the test version specified by the request when the primary attribute specified by the request matches the primary attribute of the at least one version and the secondary attribute specified by the request does not match the secondary attribute of the at least one version; selecting a version of the test ingredients from the test ingredients stored within the cache of the selected farm machine responsive to determining that the test version of the test ingredients is related to the selected version of the test ingredients according to the comparison; and updating the selected version of the test ingredients responsive to determining that the test version of the test ingredients is related to the selected version of the test ingredients.