thecrumb.com » Ant http://www.thecrumb.com ColdFusion, Ant, jQuery and other geeky stuff with the occasional motorcycle post. Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:52:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Why Is Fusion Authority Quarterly Update So Good? http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/06/09/why-is-fusion-authority-quarterly-update-so-good/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/06/09/why-is-fusion-authority-quarterly-update-so-good/#comments Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:02:54 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/?p=459 Haven’t subscribed yet to Fusion Authority Quarterly Update?

Why you ask should I do that?

  • Because it’s the only ColdFusion centric publication out there?
  • Because it’s always full of top notch content written by the best in the ColdFusion community?
  • Because it has a top notch editing staff that makes writing for them easy?
  • Because the content to ad ratio is leaning in the right direction?
  • Because that really was Judith Dinowitz stalking you in the office parking lot with her red pen of doom…

No!!! Those are all lame reasons! The main reason you should subscribe … is because I’m in it - dorky photograph and everything!

Fusion Authority Quarterly Update

I’d like to thank Judith and Dana who edited my sloppy prose and turned it into something fit for the printed page.

And BTW the issue I’m in, Vol.II Issue IV, is jam packed with goodness on SVN, Apache, Beans, Ant (of course) and more!

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]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/06/09/why-is-fusion-authority-quarterly-update-so-good/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Send Me Your Favorite Ant Tasks http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/06/06/send-me-your-favorite-ant-tasks/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/06/06/send-me-your-favorite-ant-tasks/#comments Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:38:50 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/?p=455 I setup a new page on my Ant wiki for additional tasks.  I’ve got several listed that I frequently use but I’m sure there are more… :)   So leave a comment with your favorite Ant tasks and I’ll add them!

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]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/06/06/send-me-your-favorite-ant-tasks/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ jsLex and Bromine http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/05/27/jslex-and-bromine/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/05/27/jslex-and-bromine/#comments Wed, 28 May 2008 02:34:14 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/?p=451 jsLex looks neat (it’s an Eclipse plugin):

jsLex gives developers a complete picture of the performance issues with-in thier Ajax application. By auto injecting profiling code using jsLex ant task, developers don’t need to modify their code to track down bottlenecks, minimizing coding erros and saving time.

Looks like it does quite a bit more than that look at the features page.

I’ve been so busy but I need to find some time to tinker with these tools.  I still have tried out  CubicTest either! And today I noticed Bromine!

Bromine is a fully fledged QA tool that integrates with Selenium Core and Selenium Remote Control. It makes the life of testers, test managers, developers and other people who would have an interest in how the development of a web application is progressing.

Too many tools and not enough time!!

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]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/05/27/jslex-and-bromine/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ I’m In Fusion Authority Quarterly Update! http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/05/17/im-in-fusion-authority-quarterly-update/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/05/17/im-in-fusion-authority-quarterly-update/#comments Sun, 18 May 2008 02:20:40 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/?p=448 I’ve got an Ant article in the upcoming issue of Fusion Authority Quarterly Update!

It looks like a great issue:

  • Setting Up Your Development Environment From A to Z by Terrence Ryan
  • Getting Started with Subversion by Jim Pickering
  • Subversion in the Workflow by Boyan Kostadinov
  • Advanced Subversion by Kevin Jones
  • Automating Your Development with ANT by Jim Priest
  • Apache Essentials for the ColdFusion Developer by Aaron West
  • Getting to Know Mr. Wizard by Brian Rinaldi
  • Beans and DAOs and Gateways, Oh My! by Sean Corfield
  • Formal Code Reviews by Terrence Ryan
  • Improving Your Estimates by Peter Bell
  • FusionReactor: ColdFusion Server Healthcare by Charlie Arehart

I’ll be in the parking lot at Barnes and Noble signing copies. Stop by!!

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]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/05/17/im-in-fusion-authority-quarterly-update/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Keeping Up With My Ant Wiki http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/30/keeping-up-with-my-ant-wiki/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/30/keeping-up-with-my-ant-wiki/#comments Thu, 01 May 2008 01:12:43 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/?p=441 I recently overhauled my wiki - switching from Mediawiki back to Dokuwiki.  Lots of reasons for the switch but one of the big benefits is there is now a RSS feed for recent changes!

You can add this link to your feedreader and easily find out when I update something.

I’m regularly adding links that either I find, or people email me so if you are interested in Ant this is an easy way to keep up to date.

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]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/30/keeping-up-with-my-ant-wiki/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Ant Conditionals http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/08/ant-conditionals/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/08/ant-conditionals/#comments Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:46:44 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/?p=411 I'm finally getting around to integrating Ant and my Selenium scripts...

Right now I have a suite of tests to run in Selenium - but before running each test I'd like to revert the database back to a know state. I have an Ant buildfile that does this but it also includes a target that require user input. So I dug around trying to figure out how I could reuse this buildfile without duplicating any code.

Turns out this is quite easy in Ant.

I have my build-sql.xml:

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CODE:
  1. <target name="prepare" depends="init" description="Setup properties">
  2. <input message="Where do you want to deploy to?"
  3.         validargs="ESDEV,ESTST,ESPRD"
  4.         addproperty="script.schema"
  5.         defaultvalue="ESDEV"/>
  6. <query name="sql.password" message="Enter the schema password" password="true"/>
  7. <!-- define oracle login - using info provided above -->
  8. <property name="script.login" value="${sql.username}/${sql.password}@${script.schema}.WORLD" />
  9. </target>

Upon execution this asks me which server to I want to deploy to and also prompts me for my SQL password. Then it uses that information to build a new property 'script.login' which we then use later to kick off our SQL scripts.

Turns out it is very easy to bypass this by using the UNLESS attribute within the target:

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CODE:
  1. <target name="prepare" unless="script.login" depends="init" description="Setup properties">

By simply adding unless="script.login" - Ant will now check to see if a property called 'script.login' has already been defined. If it has, it will bypass running this target.

To reverse this logic and only run this task if the property has been defined use IF:

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  1. <target name="prepare" if="script.login" depends="init" description="Setup properties">

Now in my test buildfile I simply define 'script.login' (set in testing.properties) before running my build-sql.xml buildfile.

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  1. <target name="prepare" description="Prepare environment for build">
  2.     <!-- include external properies - common values for build file -->
  3.     <property file="common.properties"/>
  4.     <property file="auth.properties"/>   
  5.     <property file="testing.properties"/>
  6.     <property file="${user.name}.properties"/>
  7. </target>
  8.  
  9. <target name="buildSQL" depends="prepare" description="Clean db">
  10.       <ant antfile="build-sql.xml"/>
  11. </target>

This example uses simple conditionals as attributes of the target. There is also a dedicated condition task for even more control.

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]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/08/ant-conditionals/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Quickly Setup New Projects Using SVN http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/07/quickly-setup-new-projects-using-svn/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/07/quickly-setup-new-projects-using-svn/#comments Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:00:20 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/?p=409 We have a standard directory structure for each of our projects:

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  1. projectname
  2. /docs
  3. /testing
  4. /build
  5. /priv
  6. /pub

Testing contains our Selenium scripts (and in the future - unit testing scripts). Build contains our Ant scripts.

At the office I'm in charge of setting up new SVN repositories and one of the things I've done to speed up setting up new projects is to create a 'template' project directory. This contains all the folders listed above along with some default buildfile and testing scripts.

I first created this layout in a new repository. I then added our standard buildfiles and testing suite files. I then created a SVN dumpfile using the svnadmin dump command. You end up with a dumpfile containing the contents of your repository.

Now when I create a new project I simple create the new project's repository, and then use the svnadmin load command to import my 'default' dumpfile contents.

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  1. /usr/bin/svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs /var/www/svn/projectname
  2. sudo chown -R apache:apache /var/www/svn/projectname
  3. sudo svnadmin load /var/www/svn/projectname </var/www/svn/tmp/template.dumpfile --ignore-uuid -q

Now when the first person checks out the project - they already have the required directory structure, buildfiles and testing templates.

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]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/07/quickly-setup-new-projects-using-svn/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Wacky Wiki http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/02/wacky-wiki/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/02/wacky-wiki/#comments Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:33:41 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/?p=405 OK. The wiki may be a bit wacky for the next few days. Awhile ago I switched from Dokuwiki to Mediawiki. Mainly just to try out Mediawiki and get familiar with how it worked.

It is very powerful - but it's a bit of a pain to update, and extensions seem a bit hit or miss. So it's back to Dokuwiki for me! I've been meaning to do some housecleaning on the wiki anyway so it's a good time to do that as well. HOPEFULLY the links won't change but I'm not 100% sure of that yet.

I get a lot of good feedback on the Ant wiki page and also have a few more things planned to make it easier to get Ant up and running for application development. Stay tuned!

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]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/04/02/wacky-wiki/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Ant. The Missing Files… http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/03/22/ant-the-missing-files/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/03/22/ant-the-missing-files/#comments Sun, 23 Mar 2008 01:39:50 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/03/22/ant-the-missing-files/ I wanted to post a follow up after my ColdFusion Meetup Ant presentation, especially for those who couldn't attend. In addition to the example files and Powerpoint slides included in the ZIP download I have bundled all the 'extra' files that don't come with Ant by default... Files to provide additional Ant tasks for email, FTP, interaction with Oracle, Subversion, etc...

If you download the files there is a /jar directory included as well as some instructions on where to copy these files and how to add the directory to your path.

All of these libraries are released under fairly flexible licenses so I feel it's OK to bundle them like this. If someone yells at me I'll remove the offending tasks but until then this will make getting up and running with Ant much easier. I'll also try to keep that updated if I run into any additonal tasks that prove useful. I've also added a link to the recording as well!

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]]> http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/03/22/ant-the-missing-files/feed/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ What Time Is It? CFMeetup? http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/03/20/what-time-is-it-cfmeetup/ http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/03/20/what-time-is-it-cfmeetup/#comments Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:08:19 +0000 Jim http://www.thecrumb.com/2008/03/20/what-time-is-it-cfmeetup/ Well - it's 6:00pm but unfortunately I can't get on the CFMeetup Connect site. Charlie mentioned he had a busy schedule today so I imagine he's running late or possibly had some technical difficulties... I'm going to stick around for 30 minutes or so because I don't have anything else to do :)

Update: Ray showed up and the meeting was a success. Well, it was for me... Hopefully everyone else enjoyed it. That was my first "online" presentation so I hope I did OK :)

Update #2 Sorry for the delay! Lost was on last night :) Files are located on the Ant page of my wiki Thanks again to Ray Camden who got the meeting starting, Charlie Arehart who runs the CFMeetup and everyone else who came out to attend!!

Doing the online meeting was a bit odd. It was weird not having an audience there. When speaking in front of an audience it's easy to tell if they are 'getting it' or if you need to slow down and go over more detail. Online there is no feedback other than the chat window. But overall it was fun and maybe I can come up with something else to present in the future!

I DID forget to mention yWorks Ant Explorer - check out this older post. It's a helpful tool that gives you some visuals of your buildfiles.

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