I'm working on a project to develop a custom Ant task.
As part of automated acceptance testing, I'd like to execute Ant from JUnit (the opposite of the usual desire) and pass it a string containing certain build XML to be tested via a command line param or stdin or pipe or something like that, rather than referring it to a buildfile on disk.
Is there any feasible way to do this?
Ant expects a file as input. You can however use the -f parameter to specify a tempfile as input:
$ cat <<EOF > tmp1.xml
<project name="demo" default="hello">
<target name="hello">
<echo>hello world</echo>
</target>
</project>
EOF
$ ant -f tmp1.xml
Obviously from Junit you're more likely the write the XML from Java :-)
Related
I have a build.xml file that works with a build.properties file.
The build.properties file has 2 keys as below:
my.relativeurlpath=sample/web/${my.key}
my.key=default
I have a Jenkins job that writes the value of my.key in the build.properties file from an input parameter using a Shell script:
sed -i -e '/my\.key/d' build.properties
echo "my.key = ${input_param}" >> build.properties
In my build.properties file, among other things, I create a properties file dynamically that reads my.key from the build.properties file:
<propertyfile file="myfile.properties">
<entry key="SpecialKey" value="${my.key}" />
</propertyfile>
When I run the Jenkins job, the entry my.relativeurlpath=sample/web/${my.key} does not appear in build.properties file. As a result, the dynamically generated myfile.properties file does not receive the value for SpecialKey.
Could someone tell me how I can fix this? I suspect a circular reference is likely, but cannot settle with a clear view of it.
I am relatively new in ant, at school I have an assignment to do a build file. One of my questions is to copy to "/foldercopy" the file whose name(or path) is taken as argument for ant. I need to do something like:
ant cpfile file.txt
So ant will copy the file.txt to /foldercopy. I searched a lot on google but all I could find was something with "-Darg", but my teacher said that it's not correct. Is there any way to do it?
Plain command line arguments to ant are considered to be target names, so if you want to pass arguments to your target you need to use properties, via -D:
ant -Dfile=file.txt cpfile
and access the value as ${file} inside build.xml
This will help you:
<target name="copytask" >
<copy file="file.txt" todir="path-od-dir" failonerror="false" />
</target>
I want an ant task that includes command line passed arguments. The command line arguments can vary in number.
Specifically, for the <java> task within ant.
I would like to do this on the command line:
$ ant run foo bar ...
Ideally, "foo" and "bar" and other arguments "...", would be passed as trailing arguments to the java instance created in the <java> task.
java would see:
$ java -classpath ./output Foobar foo bar ...
In other words, I would like the same ant <java> task do the following:
$ ant run foo
# executes "java -classpath ./output Foobar foo"
$ ant run foo bar
# executes "java -classpath ./output Foobar foo bar"
$ ant run foo bar baz
# executes "java -classpath ./output Foobar foo bar baz"
I imagined this might look something like :
<project name="Foobar" basedir=".">
<property name="build" location="output"/>
<target name="run" >
<java failonerror="true" classname="Foobar" fork="true">
<classpath>
<dirset dir="${build}" />
</classpath>
<arg line="$#"/>
</java>
</target>
</project>
Notice the line
<arg line="$#"/>
I imagined something like the above would pass all remaining arguments to the java instance. (The purpose of this Question is to find that particular ant mechanism).
The methods I have seen for this require preconfigured ant variables. That is,
$ ant run -DARG1="foo" -DARG2="bar" ...
But that method precludes a variable length argument list.
Does anyone know a method for a variable number of argument that could be forwarded to an ant <java> task (preferably doesn't require writing a complex set of ant rules)?
That's not easy because Ant's command line looks like this:
ant [options] [target [target2 [target3] ...]]
That means your variable arg list foo bar baz items would be treated as targets, leading to similarly named Ant targets being run, or Ant throwing errors if they don't exist.
One option is to use the -Doption=value syntax to pass the variable argument list by means of a wrapper script. Perhaps:
ant -classpath ./output -Dmy_args=\"$#\" Foobar
in a shell script, then make use of the passed arg in the java task:
<arg line="${my_args}"/>
Another option would be to write a Java main() class that will accept the arguments as you want them to be, and then call Ant for you.
bash shell:
./mimic_cmd "startDaemon()"
Corresponding Ant code:
<exec failonerror="true" executable="/bin/mimic_cmd">
<arg value='"startDaemon()"' />
</exec>
Does the Ant code exactly represent the above command at the bash shell? Based on the debug info, it looks like it:
[exec] Executing '/bin/mimic_cmd' with arguments:
[exec] '"startDaemon()"'
[exec]
[exec] The ' characters around the executable and arguments are
[exec] not part of the command.
Execute:Java13CommandLauncher: Executing '/bin/mimic_cmd' with arguments:
'"startDaemon()"'
The ' characters around the executable and arguments are not part of the command.
However, the Ant code returns and exit code of 1 while the Bash shell command returns 0.
Toggling vmlauncher doesn't help, and paths are all correct.
The same Ant code works on windows with the resulting debug output:
[exec] Executing 'C:\bin\mimic_cmd' with arguments:
[exec] '"startDaemon()"'
[exec]
[exec] The ' characters around the executable and arguments are
[exec] not part of the command.
Execute:Java13CommandLauncher: Executing 'C:\bin\mimic_cmd' with arguments:
'"startDaemon()"'
The ' characters around the executable and arguments are not part of the command.
Can you tell us what mimic_cmd is? (Is it an ELF executable, is it a script -- and if so, what is its contents?)
You don't need nor want the double-quotes inside your ANT XML attributes (incidentally, for it to be well-formed XML you should have written them as " not ", but that changes nothing with respect to this discussion) unless your executable expects them. The corresponding ANT code for either of the following (100% equivalent) shell command lines:
./mimic_cmd "startDaemon()"
./mimic_cmd 'startDaemon()'
./mimic_cmd startDaemon\(\)
./mimic_cmd startDaemon"()"
./mimic_cmd startDaemon'()'
...actually is:
<exec failonerror="true" executable="/bin/mimic_cmd">
<arg value="startDaemon()" />
</exec>
...or, for illustrative purposes:
<!-- spawn a shell with your original command line -->
<exec failonerror="true" executable="/bin/sh">
<arg value="-c" />
<arg value="/bin/mimic_cmd "startDaemon()"" />
</exec>
Why that is so is longwinded to explain; suffices to say that, in your specific case, the only time when you'd have to use double quotes would be when ultimately issuing the command via a *nix shell (either interactively or as part of another script or programatically via the execing of sh -c), and only in order for that shell not to think that the round parens () have special meaning. By the time the shell would in turn spawn mimic_cmd it would have already stripped the double quotes (and substituted backslash-escaped sequences etc. -- see how a *nix shell parses its command line) ANT does not run your command via the shell but rather executes it directly, so in this case mimic_cmd finds itself with a bunch of double quotes on its hand which it apparently doesn't know how to handle.
You essentially have to think of it as replacing all forms of shell quoting and escaping with XML escaping and breaing down into <arg/> tags.
Windows' CMD.EXE is special in the sense that, unline *nix shells, it does minimal parsing (and generally does not care about double quotes in program arguments), leaving it up to the program to figure out what you meant by quoting. (This is actually a hard limitation of Windows' CreateProcess which does not have the notion of argv[], leaving it up to each program to intepret lpCommandLine in whichever way it sees fit; some will get rid of the quotes for you, but that behaviour is extremely inconsistent, e.g. issue echo "bla" on the CMD.EXE prompt to see what CMD.EXE's builtins think about quoting.) Again, in your case the round parens () have no meaning for CMD.EXE so you don't need them even when typing the command at a command prompt. As for ANT, on Windows as on *nix platforms, it spwans mimic_cmd via CreateProcess not CMD.EXE so you don't really want to quote anything.
The Ant exec task has an output property which can be used to tell Ant where the output goes. I've used it to redirect the output to a file. The thing is, if I don't do something with the output, the stuff that Ant prints isn't that much of a help - it's not complete.
Is there someway of setting the output property to System.out?
When executing a batch file with ant's apply or exec tasks on Windows, I found there are special cases where some of the stdout and stderr is not captured by ant. (For example: if you call a batch file that in turn calls other commands (like node.exe), then the stdout and stderror from the child node.exe process is lost.)
I spent a long time trying to debug this! It seems that the batch file's stdout and stderr is captured, however commands called by the batch file are somehow not seen by ant. (perhaps because they are separate child processes). Using the output and error attributes as suggested above doesn't help because only some of the stdout and/or stderr is captured.
The solution I came up with (a hack) is to add these arguments at the end of the command:
<!--Next arg: forces node's stderror and stdout to a temporary file-->
<arg line=" > _tempfile.out 2<&1"/>
<!--Next arg: If command exits with an error, then output the temporary file to stdout, -->
<!--delete the temporary file and finally exit with error level 1 so that -->
<!--the apply task can catch the error if #failonerror="true" -->
<arg line=" || (type _tempfile.out & del _tempfile.out & exit /b 1)"/>
<!--Next arg: Otherwise, just type the temporary file and delete it-->
<arg line=" & type _tempfile.out & del _tempfile.out &"/>
Because this hack only applies to windows, remember to add #osfamily="windows" to the apply or exec task. And create similar task(s) for `#osfamily="unix", etc but without these extra arguments.
The output of exec does go to standard out unless you specify the output attribute.
If you want to output to System.out, then simply do not specify the "output" attribute. If you would like to redirect to a file AND print it to System.out, you can use the tee command, which will redirect output to a given file and also echo it to standard out... I do not know if Windows supports "tee" or an equivalent.
Maybe you want to look at the error, logError, and errorproperty attributes of the exec task too. These deal with the handling of the standard error stream from the exec'd process. There may be useful information there that is going awol for some reason - which might account for the incompleteness you see.
But, if the exec'd process decides to close stdout or stderr and send them elsewhere - there's little you can do.
I have faced similar problem: the output of command execution was suppressed. Perhaps that is the side effect when running cmd under WinXP (I an using maven-antrun-plugin). Anyway setting output="con" worked out perfectly:
<configuration>
<target>
<exec executable="cmd" output="con">
<arg value="/c" />
<arg value="..." />
</exec>
</target>
</configuration>
Working with Ant and Gruntjs:
For anyone trying to get this to work using Gruntjs. I was able to get it working by doing the following (in combination with darcyparker's answer).
In my Ant Build File:
<target description="run grunt js tasks" name="grunt">
<exec dir="/path/to/grunt" executable="cmd" failonerror="true">
<arg value="/c"/>
<arg value="jshint.bat"/> // I broke each task into it's own exec
<arg line=" > jshint.log 2<&1"/>
<arg line=" || (type jshint.log & del jshint.log & exit /b 1)"/>
<arg line=" & type jshint.log & del jshint.log &"/>
</exec>
<exec dir="/path/to/grunt" executable="cmd" failonerror="true">
// another grunt task (IE: uglify, cssmin, ect..)
</exec>
</target>
jshint.bat
#echo off
pushd "C:\path\to\grunt\"
#ECHO _____________________________________________
#ECHO GRUNT JSHINT
#ECHO _____________________________________________
grunt jshint --stack >>jshint.log
NOTE: Path to grunt would be where your Gruntfile.js is located. Also note, I had to initially create the log file (to get it to work with darcyparker's answer) which would output the stack trace from that particular task. This would then give me the grunt task stack output from wherever I call my ant target.
Finally note that pushd "C:\path\to\grunt\" won't be necissary if your bat files are in the same directory as your Gruntfile.js.
I was experiencing this same kind of issue trying to get the build process to fail in Ant after Karma tests intentionally failed, and executing them with "grunt test".
Just added /c before "grunt test", and it worked like a charm
<target name="unittest">
<echo>*** KARMA UNIT TESTING ***</echo>
<exec dir="api_ui" executable="cmd" osfamily="windows" logError="yes" failonerror="true">
<arg value="/c grunt test"/>
</exec>
</target>