I want you to do something for me; at the top of the browser you’re reading this on there should be a help button (unless you’re on a mobile device). Click it, then click the about option. You should be presented with something similar to this:
If the application you or your company is developing doesn’t have this feature then you need to give yourself a slap on the wrist and ask yourself, WHY? As a release engineer we’re often expected to know exactly what’s in every environment at all times. If you’re a small organisation with only a few projects and deliveries then this is sometimes possible, but even then what happens if you go on holiday and someone else covers for you??
If you’re using Ant I would advise writing a small task that will pull a few basic parameters from your build machine. Some useful properties to gather are the following:
Username
Build Machine
Date
Time
Build Number
Here’s the Ant target I use. It includes some ClearCase stuff (the source tool we use) but I thought I would leave it in for information.
<target name="buildinfo" description="Record build metadata">
<echo message="${line.separator}" file="${build.props.file}" append="true"/>
<echo message="buildby=${env.USERNAME}${line.separator}" file="${build.props.file}" append="true"/>
<echo message="host=${env.COMPUTERNAME}${line.separator}" file="${build.props.file}" append="true"/>
<echo message="builddate=${build.time}${line.separator}" file="${build.props.file}" append="true"/>
<echo message="buildview=${cc.view}${line.separator}" file="${build.props.file}" append="true"/>
<echo message="buildstream=${cc.stream}${line.separator}" file="${build.props.file}" append="true"/>
<echo message="buildproject=${cc.project}${line.separator}" file="${build.props.file}" append="true"/>
<echo message="foundationbaseline=${cc.found-baselines}${line.separator}" file="${build.props.file}" append="true"/>
<echo message="recommendedbaseline=${cc.rec-baseline}${line.separator}" file="${build.props.file}" append="true"/>
<echo message="Projrecommendedbaseline=${cc.rec-bline-stream}${line.separator}" file="${build.props.file}" append="true"/>
<echo message="currentbaselines=${cc.current-baselines}${line.separator}" file="${build.props.file}" append="true"/>
</target>
Write some code to get this to display in your app then its job done!
