auto-build system with ant - java

We have a python auto-build system in a C# project. It will do daily source update and build automatically and send email out if build failed. Now we are thinking to have a similar system for our Java project.
We use Ant in this Java project, but not Log4j.
It looks like the simple way (for us) is use python and call Ant to do build, and write result to file, and then paser the result file to see failed or not.
Do you have a better idea?

I'd recommend using a continuous integration server such as Jenkins. It's simple to set up, has Ant integration built-in and will do all the parsing of results and reporting builds as passed or failed for you, plus much, much more.

Related

How to execute a program which reads lint-results.xml of Jenkins once the build & lint check complete

I already managed to connect my git and automate Gradle build and execute android lint as the post-build action of the Jenkins. I can see the lint-results.xml file created in the following location.
myapp/app/build/reports/lint-results.xml
As the next approach, I need to read this XML file (preferably using Java). I can write a program which reads XML elements but how can we identify if the Jenkins build is successful which results in triggering the XML reading java app?
Is it possible to add this java app to the post-build process of the Jenkins too? So it should be able to execute once the lint check is complete and the XML file is created.
Appreciate your insight as I'm new to Jenkins. Thanks.
Why aren't you simply using the Jenkins Lint plugin. It's quite handy and you only need to feed the xml file into it and will get all of the benefits for free.

How to programmatically retrieve some build files in TeamCity?

I'm currently doing a plugin for TeamCity 8.1.4 to support our tool. The latter generates some JSON and HTML/CSS/JS files I would like to include in TeamCity UI through respectively a graph and some kind of frame I guess.
Our tool is supposed to generate these files in the directory of the project after each build is finished. I read in the docs that I could create "build artifacts", which are basically files kept on the server side. I figured I could then access them with getArtifactsDirectory() method from SBuild interface. The thing is, I have no idea how to instruct TeamCity to create a build artifact programmatically. Or maybe I'm thinking this backwards and there's another way to do this... I'd appreciate some pointers since the Plugin community forum looks dead.
If you are looking to adding an HTML content to build results or projects, please check out this documentation page: 'Including third-party reports in build results'
Configuratoin described in this doc can be done using Java API:
see jetbrains.buildServer.web.reportTabs.ReportTabManager docs to configure tab settings on server side.
see jetbrains.buildServer.agent.artifacts.ArtifactsWatcher to publish files from build agent. This one is used to publish files as build artifacts.
UPD The abovementioned components can be used by plugin to configure 'third party report tab' (without any manual configuration). This way, plugin can provide html report from build without need to access uploaded artifacts.

Coq as part of continuous integration

In my current project we use Java and Coq. We have a continuous integration set up, using maven. We want to check coq files as part of it. I.e. we need:
Download and install coq locally if it isn't installed (like maven does with frameworks like gwt, etc)
Check that coq files are correct
Did anybody try setting up this? How can this be done?
I don't recommend automate that from your CI Build. Instead, it looks more like a Machine Configuration Dependency.
In cases like this, it is worth it to rely in tools like Puppet and Vagrant in order to ensure your Development Environment conforms to a given context, so your code needs to deal with this as either a premise or - better yet - ensure it is available in your PATH.
I know this is a really old question, but I have a different answer.
I have a similar CI setup that needs to install build tools. In some cases, such as on bitbucket, I pre-build a docker image containing the tools and update the build configuration each time I update the tools. In bitbucket, this works well because the source code of the package being built points to the particular docker image version to use to build it, which ensures that older builds can still be built, assuming the older docker images are retained.
Otherwise, I just script the installation of the tools using wget or curl to download as necessary.

Creating a program that will run before and after compilation in Eclipse

I am currently working on a small program that should comment out some code used for testing.
I want it to auto run before the compiler while compiling the release version and another program that will comment the code back in after compilation was over.
The program works the only thing I am missing is to add it to the build process.
Thanks to all helpers!
In Eclipse, right-click a project, choose Properties → Builders and click New. You can add an Ant script or a command line that Eclipse will trigger when building the project. You can also control the order of builders in the same dialog.
However, I agree with JB Nizet – there are many advantages to having Ant or Maven build your project.
Don't use Eclipse to build the release version of your app. Use Ant, Maven, or any other build tool that is much more flexible than Eclipse, doesn't need a GUI, can be scripted and used by a continuous integration server.
All of these tools should easily be used to include your pre-compilation and post-compilation tasks in the build process.
That said, you could just use a public static final boolean constant FOR_TEST, and include all your testing code in
if (TestUtil.FOR_TEST) {
}
You would then have just a single place to change in the code to have all the test code removed from the compiled version. No need for a complex Java program to do that.
Or you could let all the testing code in the released version, and activate it when testing using a system property, for example. This wouldn't even need any precompilation/postcompilation phase, and would probably have a negligible cost.

What is build automation software (for example, Ant)?

I see reference of ant a lot but I don't get exactly what its meant to do? from what i've heard its supposed to compile your projects but can't i just do that by clicking Run->Run in eclipse?
Edit : I guess I should rephrase my question. I already know that ant is a 'build automation software', my question is, what exactly is build automation? I thought that you're supposed to test your app, and when it is running you click the 'build' button in eclipse or through command-line java, and it makes a .jar file out of it? So why do you need to 'automate' this process?
I already know that ant is a 'build automation software', my question is, what exactly is build automation? I thought that you're supposed to test your app, and when it is running you click the 'build' button in eclipse or through command-line java, and it makes a .jar file out of it? So why do you need to 'automate' this process?
Not all the Java development is done through eclipse and not all the jars may be built from the command line ( or should be built from the command line ) .
You may need additionally run test cases, unit tests, and many, many other process.
What ant does, is provide a mechanism to automate all this work ( so you don't have to do it every time ) and perhaps you may invoke this ant script each day at 6 p.m.
For instance, in some projects, a daily build is needed, the following are the task that may be automated with ant, so they can run without human intervention.
Connect to subversion server.
Download/update with the latest version
Compile the application
Run the test cases
Pack the application ( in jar, war, ear, or whatever )
Commit this build binaries to subversion.
Install the application in a remote server
Restart the server
Send an email with the summary of the job.
Of course for other projects this is overkill, but for some others is very helpful.
rogeriopvl is absolutely correct, but to answer your "can't I just do that by clicking Run->Run in Eclipse?" question: that's fine for a project that you're working on on your own, and don't need a repeatable, scriptable build in multiple environments.
If you're working on an open source project, however, or professional software which needs to be able to build on a build server etc, requiring a particular IDE to be running isn't a good idea.
Ant is used to automate a build process, but a build process is often much more than compiling. Ant has "tasks" that can be used to perform miscellaneous useful functions. You can create your own task to do just about anything by writing a java class and telling ant where to find it. You can then mix and match these tasks to create targets that will execute a set of tasks.
You can also set up a dynamic environment in which to build your application. You can set up property files to hold variables that can be used in the build process, i.e. to hold file paths, class paths, etc. This is useful for instance to differentiate between test and production builds where deployment paths, database instances, etc. might change. Ant also includes flow control (if, etc.)
Some things I've seen ant do:
Compile code
Use version control to checkout the latest version or to tag the version being built
Run sql scripts to build or rebuild a test database
Copy files from an external resource for inclusion in a project
Bundle code into a jar, war or ear file
Deploy a web application to an application server
Restart an application server
Execute a test suite
Static analysis, i.e. CheckStyle or PMD
Send email to a team to alert them to a build.
Generate files based on information from the build.
Example: I have a jsp in my app that does nothing but display version/build information. It is generated by ant when I run a build, and the production operations team checks this page when they deploy the application to make sure they've deployed the correct build.
In many larger companies (and likely some smaller ones), you'll find that production code is not built by the people who developed it. Instead, the developers may check their code into a source code repository and tag it. Then they give this tag to a build team.
The build team, in a separate (clean) area - possibly on some headless server (i.e. with no GUI) - will then check out the code and run a build script. The build script will be completely independent of the desktop environment/IDE.
This ensures that nothing which happens to be on any one developer's computer is "polluting" the build. (Or, more likely, nothing outside source control is required for the system to work!)
So most software you use will never, ever be built from a developer's desktop.
PS. You might also want to look at the idea of Continuous Integration
The short answer is that Ant is a great way to create a complete project build that is independent of any particular tool any developer may be using. Without an independent build, things can go haywire quickly - especially for large project teams.
And now for the long answer... I have been brought into several projects without any sense of an independent build. On one project, there was one guy who was not a developer that was tasked with building and deploying the software. He had created 147 separate windows batch files to compile each EJB, each servlet, and each client component. There was no error checking for this build. All log messages, including error messages went to standard out. It was up to him to manually recognize by reading this log which exception or message printed was a normal and which message was an error. He also had to deploy this software he just built. Deploying was equally as complex since there were several load-balanced tiers. Each module had to be placed in the right place manually with options setup to match downstream and upstream tiers. Building and deploying this software took him at least 3 days using this method. Of course, only then could anyone determine if the build "worked". Usually, after this period all the programmers would scramble to debug the build. Programmers would say my module works fine in my IDE. I just click run like this, see?
Indeed, the individual software modules usually worked, but the build and deployment was horribly ineffective. And just as bad, it was equally as difficult for anyone to deploy a build to more than one environment. Management would say, ok you now have this build working in our regression testing environment. Now deploy that same build in this other environment so the sales guys can demo up and coming software. That should be simple to do, but it also took at least 2 days, followed by a "debugging the build" period. Builds and deploys were never simple and never accurate. It really slowed the project down.
Anyway, we replaced this entire procedure with a complete Ant based build and deploy mechanism. The end result was that a complete build could be created and deployed in less than 30 minutes, completely automated. The QA guy managing the builds and deploys could keep a whiteboard of which environment had which build deployed to it and which group was using that environment. This was something that was just not possible with the old system.
Ant is for automating software build processes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Ant
Ant allows CRISP (complete, repeatable, informative, schedulable, portable) builds. You can find great info on it in this presentation by Mike Clark and in his book, Pragmatic Project Automation.
Ant is a build tool, akin to makefiles (albeit with a very different syntax in XML). If you're only using Eclipse it's fine to stick to that and you can always convert an Ant build file into an Eclipse project (Eclipse's launch configurations are then, if I remember correctly, the equivalent of Ant's build targets).
If you want to deploy the source code of the application and allow others to easily build or set it up, automating that using Ant is probably not a bad idea. But it's usually not a consistent experience for users or at least I haven't seen much consensus on what targets should be there and doing what so far.
Ant may also be used for regular automated builds (you wouldn't want to hit Run in Eclipse every night, right? :-))
If there's one close to you I think you'd get a lot out of CITCON, the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference. You get to talk with lots of people about the benefits of automation applied to building and testing software.
Basically people use Ant (with other tools) to automate everything they want to have happen after a commit. The basic advantages of such automation are faster, better and cheaper.
Faster because things happen right away without waiting for a human to get around to it.
Better because computers are really really good at doing the same thing the same way every time. (Humans tend to suck at that.)
Cheaper because you have fewer mistake and the mistakes that occur are caught sooner and therefore cheaper to fix.
You are also referring to the ""Export ant buildfile".
If you write your own Ant script for building your application outside eclipse, you can write your own targets that use the Ant task to delegate to the generated build.xml.
Also, you can configure a project's 'builders' (project properties » Builders) to run any script (ant or otherwise) you want when you build the project, manually or automatically.
Joel (Spolsky) has a great article on "The Joel Test." Many of them revolve around being able to do important things often, quickly and reliably. One of those things is your build.
Eclipse is using ant for building, running, deploying, ...
"Ant is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like Make, without Make's wrinkles and with the full portability of pure Java code." (from link text

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