Spread Windows Forms Product Documentation

Pipeline Licensing

MESCIUS licensing is based upon the development machine. However, in a pipeline environment, the license needs to be activated on a virtual machine or Docker on the cloud. A pipeline license is designed for the build agent of DevOps pipelines like Azure, AWS, and Bitbucket.

Follow the instructions below for your type of license.

Activation with Standard Developer License

With a standard developer license, you may build and deploy applications from a fixed build agent.

If your pipeline has multiple fixed build agents, according to the user agreement, each build agent requires a separate developer license.
If you have multiple build agents but only use one at a time, you can use a single developer license, ensuring you activate the license before use and deactivate it after use. However, please note that to prevent abuse, each license has a limited number of activations and deactivations. You may encounter activation failures—in such cases, you may need to wait 24 hours before activating again.

Please contact our sales or support teams if you have any questions on the allowed activations.

Steps to Activate a Standard Serial Key

To activate the serial key on the build server, follow these steps:

Install the MESCIUS License Manager tool (SA3) on the build server.
1. If Spread.NET or any MESCIUS Inc. product is installed, then the SA3 tool is already installed at C:\ProgramData\SA3\Desktop.
2. If Spread.NET or any MESCIUS Inc. product is not installed, download the SA3 deployment tool:
  1. Windows: NuGet Package
  2. Linux/MacOS: NuGet Package
  3. Install via command line: dotnet tool install -g sa3client
Before the build, call the SA3 tool to activate the license.
1. If Spread.NET is installed, you can use sa3client a <serial-key> to activate the license.
2. If Spread.NET is not installed, you can use sa3client a <serial-key> --force to activate the license.
If the build agent is not needed, use sa3client d <serial-key-prefix> to call the SA3 tool to deactivate the license.

Note:
The key should be deactivated even if the build fails, otherwise, the license cannot be activated for the next build agent.
If deactivation of standard developer license remains a problem, it is recommended to upgrade to a pipeline license.
The environment should have network access to https://sa3.mescius.com/ .

Activation with Pipeline License

Spread.NET pipeline license allows you to build and deploy applications from a dynamic build agent efficiently, without the need to deactivate the key. A pipeline license permits unlimited activations on any number of target build agents per day. However, the serial key must be activated before each build, but it does not require network access, and it cannot be used for design-time development.

Contact our sales team at https://developer.mescius.com/contact or call 1-800-858-2739 to obtain a pipeline license. A pipeline license includes the following:

Local Activation Package File
Serial Key
Password

Steps to Activate a Pipeline Serial Key

In your build script, you need install the SA3 Client tool from nuget.org or from a local path, copy the local-activation-package to a local folder, then call following command to activate license. For details on installing the SA3 Client tool, please refer to Installing the Product.

sa3client ( local | local-activate ) <serial-key> <password> [( -p | --path ) <local-package-path>]

Use --path to specify the folder path that contains the local activation package file. If not specified, the current directory will be used to find the file.

Check the License Status

To check whether the license is activated or not, follow these steps:

Open command prompt.
Run the following command: sa3client list all.
In the current command-line window, check the license details, including the serial key, license state, version, activation date, expiration date, and edition.