Ant - Error handling

I found this on the net a long time ago and thought I would share. Basically, it parses a log file and extracts the errors.

 <target name="build">
  
   <echo message="Add foo bar baz"/>
  
        <exec executable="${db.sqlplus}">
  
   </exec>
  
   <echo message="Load x y z"/>
  
        <exec executable="${db.sqlplus}" dir="foobar">
  
   </exec>
  
   <!--Check the log files here-->
  
           <check-log-file fileToCheck="${output.log.1}"/>
  
           <check-log-file fileToCheck="${output.log.2}"/>
  
   <antcall target="fail-if-error"/>
  
 </target>
  
 <!--=================================================================================
  
   Check the file named in the property file.to.check to see if there are errors.
  
   The way this works is to find all lines containing the text "ERROR" and put
  
   them into a separate file. Then it checks to see if this file has non-zero
  
   length. If so, then there are errors, and it sets the property errors.found.
  
   Then it calls the send-email target, which doesn't execute if the errors.found
  
   property isn't set.
  
 -->
  
 <macrodef name="check-log-file">
  
   <attribute name="file.to.check"/>
  
   <attribute name="file.errorcount" default="@{file.to.check}.errorcount" description="The file to hold the error lines"/>
  
   <sequential>
  
     <copy file="@{file.to.check}" tofile="@{file.errorcount}">
  
       <filterchain>
  
         <linecontains>
  
           <contains value="ERROR"/>
  
         </linecontains>
  
       </filterchain>
  
     </copy>
  
     <condition property="errors.found" value="true">
  
       <length file="@{file.errorcount}" when="gt" length="0"/>
  
     </condition>
  
     <antcall target="check-log-file-send-email">
  
       <param name="file.to.check"  value="@{file.to.check}"/>
  
     </antcall>
  
   </sequential>
  
 </macrodef>
  
 <!--=================================================================================
  
   If there are any errors, send an email to let someone know
  
 -->
  
 <target name="check-log-file-send-email" if="errors.found" description="Sends an email out if error detected">
  
   <resourcecount property="error.count">
  
     <tokens><!-- default tokenizer is a line tokenizer -->
  
       <file file="${file.to.check}.errorcount"/>
  
     </tokens>
  
   </resourcecount>
  
   <echo message="Database build (${e1.codeline} - ${error.count} errors found..."/>
  
   <antcall target="mail">
  
     <param name="from-address" value="build"/>
  
     <param name="to-list"    value="myemail"/>
  
     <param name="subject"    value="Automated database build error report for ${db.host}"/>
  
     <param name="message"    value="See attached log file, ${error.count} error(s) found..."/>
  
     <param name="attach"    value="${file.to.check}"/>
  
   </antcall>
  
 </target>
  
 <!--=================================================================================
  
   Fails the database build if errors were detected.
  
 -->
  
 <target name="fail-if-error" if="errors.found">
  
   <echo message="Errors found - setting database fail flag..."/>
  
   <fail message="Errors detected during ${codeline} database build. Check logs."/>
  
 </target>  

Build & Release - Tools and Good Practice

Just yesterday I was offered a new job with a relative large insurance firm in the UK. My role will be to bring the build management team up to scratch and implement a framework from the ground up. This got me thinking... what are the tools and good practices I cant live without?


Build & Release Website

Every software development outfit should have one of these! Some of the information you would store is:

• Functional Release Notes
• Technical Release Notes
• Continuous Integration Results (Link to tools)
• Project Documentation (Javadocs or LXR)
• Runtime Logs
• Deployed Applications (A list of environments and their current deployments)
• Application Metrics
• Third Party Documentation (Tools, Libraries)
• Misc Documents

This should be maintained by the Build & Release team and should be automated. Our systems are configured to deploy the documentation once its been created.

Build & Release Calendar

Another tool no serious software company should be without. The projects that you support should be able to see your workload and manage requests accordingly. Also, if you need to justify where you're spending your time this acts as a great record for the finance department or Project Managers. There are free calendars available and tools like Jenkins also provide work well with Google Calendar.

Build Framework

No sh!t, really?! It doesn't matter what tools you use, but you should be able to build, package, run unit tests and deploy at very least. The aim here is to produce a framework that can be used with very little configuration and flexible enough to use with new projects. Some of the "powers-to-be" at my office have been trying to get us to switch to Maven for a while now. The argument that we're forced to use a single framework is a fair one, but my counter argument is that our Ant framework is so well made that we wouldn't be achieving anything by switching. Ant is a highly configurable tool but takes a lot to get up and running, however Maven is not so flexible but is much easier to use "out of the box".

Continuous Integration

CI is often considered something only used by large scale projects. This doesn't have to be the case. Even if you're a small operation with only a handful of developers it makes sense to offload the task of compiling your source and running a few simple tests. To put this into context, if you have 5 developers, a build takes 1 hour and each developer builds at least once a day, thats 25 hours wasted on builds a week. At a very generous rate of £15 per hour thats £375 a week and £1500 a month wasted in consumed resources for builds. Thats the build server bought and paid for!!

Ant - Windows Service control

When we make any changes to our databases we like to restart the application servers to refresh the datasources. Some of our development environments are run as Windows services and so it would be nice to restart them remotely from the build machines. Here's how with Ant:

I hope you can see in this snippet that the code runs 2 tasks - Stop and Start. You can break down the code if you just want a Start or Stop only script.

Adding an 'About' page to your application

Something simple, but very effective!

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!

My first blog and subsequently my first post :-)

So, hello everyone (if everyone is anyone!), this is my first post so I thought I would give you a little information about myself - I'm a 24 year old male from Newport, South Wales, UK.

I currently work for the Office for National Statistics as a Build and Release Engineer. My job involves gathering all code from developers and creating a package that can be deployed to our application servers for the business area staff to do their bit; this generally involves collating data, analysing it then releasing the new information to the public. A few of the higher profile projects would include the 2010 Census, National Accounts and many others. Some of the software that I use on a regular basis is IBM's Rational suite which handles our source control, Apache Ant and Maven for the build framework along with Oracle Database Management System (DBMS) for all that crazy database stuff. I've been in this job for 6 weeks now and I'm enjoying it tremendously, it's my first job since graduating and I'm always learning something new.

I graduated in June 2009 becoming a BSc Computer Games Development, however, since graduating I haven't done much in the way of games programming which upsets me a little; I have however got myself a copy of the latest “Game Coding Complete” by Mike McShaffry which I do plan to read through and start programming examples from. As I work my way through each example I will be sure to post my experiences and error's – as anyone in programming will now are all too unavoidable.
Well, thanks for reading and I hope you come back for more!