ANT on the Wire Using FTP, Mail, SVN, and VSS tasks (and a bonus task)

Your host… Marc Esher CF since 2000 Java since 2001 Contributor to MXUnit unit testing framework for CF NOT an ANT guru Plug alert: come see us talk about MXUnit and unit testing at Webmaniacs in May!

What this is not A high-level ANT overview A cursory look at a bunch of neat features A crash course in basic ANT The last word on any of these topics

What this is A “how-to” session; as such, it will be slightly slower-paced than most meetups A solid look at a few really useful features

Takeaways Know where to go to download all dependencies for these ANT tasks Know how to install all dependencies and configure ANT to run these tasks Run these tasks from Eclipse or command line Learn by example how to use these tasks for common operations Learn how to read the ANT documentation for more info on these tasks Not be afraid to try any of this on your own Familiar enough with these tasks that a more complicated build file is not overwhelming

Tasks we’ll cover FTP SVN (for accessing subversion repository) VSS (demo how to configure and what the task looks like) Version numbering using propertyfile

Beginning with the End Putting all these tasks together to: Check out version.properties file, increment version, use version for zip file name, check it back in Package app into zip (not covered in pres.) Run unit tests and results Upload zip file to google code (not covered in pres.) FTP version.properties file to website Re-init application so it reads that file FTP test results to website

Demo Build File

Let’s go: The ANT manual 3 key sections: Concepts and Types – explains all about directory concepts (**/ vs */, filesets, etc) and tons of other stuff Core tasks – all the built-in tasks you can usually use out of the box (with some exceptions) Optional tasks – stuff you probably have but also are more likely to require downloading additional dependencies NOTE: tasks requiring dependencies let you know they require dependencies

Our dependencies FTP needs: commons-oro and commons-net Mail needs: javamail and activation framework SVN needs: svnant task JavaHL: easiest to install Subclipse plugin through Eclipse update site (even if you disable the plugin as soon as you install it!) (we’ll use this in eclipse) VSS needs No jars, but you do need vss client installed on your machine Eclipse users: Once these are added to your file system, you need to tell ANT about them in Eclipse

Setting up ANT Assumes you have Eclipse installed If not, you can download ANT separately and do all of this stuff without Eclipse Good idea to know how to use ANT outside of eclipse – makes automation easier For this demonstration, I’ll be using ANT 1.7 that is bundled with Eclipse 3.3

Cont. Find ANT bin directory. For Eclipse, this is in %eclipse_root%\plugins\org.apache.ant_ 1.7….\bin Add ANT bin directory to system environment “path” variable Run ant –version to get some basic information

Demo ANT at command line

Cont. If you get a “cannot find tools.jar” message, it means ANT’s using the JRE and NOT the JDK. Only important if you need a compiler (or get annoyed by the tools.jar message) Install the JDK (if you don’t have it) Find your JDK’s bin path. Copy and replace the existing java bin directory with the new bin directory in your environment PATH variable

Demo adding JDK

Our build file Simple build file with test targets init test testFTP testSVN testVSS testVersion HINT: even for the final build file in your projects, keep these test targets… they’re great for confirming that new folks working on the project are correctly configured

test (core task) 1. Run and confirm it fails 2. Add dependencies to ANT lib dir Run and confirm it fails… no properties set up 4. (switch to real properties file) 5. Run in Eclipse 6. Run at command line

Demo test

Another example MXUnit build file runTests

Learn more about mail task Ant tasks – Core Tasks – Mail You can do all the normal mail stuff You can attach files to messages Cool tip: use the messagefile attribute for easier-to-manage html s

testFTP (optional task) 1. Run and confirm it fails 2. Add dependencies to ANT lib dir Run and confirm it fails (no properties) 4. Switch to real properties file 5. Run in Eclipse 6. Run at command line

Demo testFTP

A few more FTP examples MXUnit build file updatewebsite publishTestResults

Learn more about FTP task Ant tasks – Optional Tasks – FTP You can use this to synchronize using the various “time…” attributes You can control the target directory for put operations

testSVN (the trickiest) 1. Run and confirm it fails 2. Install plugin using Update Site 3. Add dependencies to ANT lib dir Get at 4. In Eclipse plugins directory, navigate to the org.tigris.subversion.javahl.win32 directory. Copy that path. 5. Paste that path into your system’s PATH environment variable 6. RESTART YOUR COMPUTER

testSVN, cont. 7. Run and confirm it fails 8. Add taskdef 9. Run in eclipse 10. Run in command line

Demo testSVN

Another SVN example MXUnit build file incrementVersion tagVersion

testVSS (optional tasks… I’ll be showing vssget) 1. Run and confirm it fails 2. Add vss path to environment PATH variable e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VSS\win32 3. Run and imagine it succeeded

Demo testVSS Also show the entries from GetLatest.xml

Learn more about VSS tasks Ant tasks – Optional Tasks – Microsoft Visual SourceSafe Tasks This is a suite of tests… vssget, vsslabel, vsscheckin, vsscheckout, etc For vssget, I advise using failonerror=“false”, writablefiles=“skip”, filetimestamp=“updated” Vsslabel is similar to tagging in SVN

Bonus: propertyfile for versioning propertyfile task writes/updates a properties file You can perform increments on properties You then read those properties using the property task with the file attribute Perfect for versioning

Demo testVersion Eclipse Command line See version number increase Note we didn’t manually create the file Add constructs like “rc” notations

Q & A