[news.eclipse.tools.buckminster] Re: Automated Testing of RCP Products w

["Tas Frangoullides" <tfrangoullides@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Johannes,

> In our case the test job gets executed regulary and is a throw-aways 
> product because the class files get instrumented with cobertura and stuff 
> while the other job gets exectuted only manual in case of a release and 
> only if the test job is stable, of course.

Ok. That makes a lot of sense for your use case.

> That sounds reasonable to me. It actually shouldn't be much of a problem. 
> Sticking to the mailapp example you could for example have an action 
> similar to the create.product action (create.test.product) that creates 
> the RCP at a different location and uses a different installable unit that 
> contains the test fragments. Or you could use the same IU and simply 
> install the feature containing the test fragments on top of that.
> On the test product you may then run your plugin tests and hudson will 
> make sure that the artifacts of the real product are only archived if the 
> build run was stable (which will depend on your unit test results).

I'm currently trying to get this working and hitting silly obstacles like 
finding (or creating) an update site for the test framework. Shouldn't be 
too hard though. I'll let you know how I get on with it.

> If you have any suggestions on how the buckminster plugin for hudson can 
> support your workflow, please let me know.

Sure, I'd be happy to discuss it. Right now I am trying to get everything 
working for the command line and hudson will the my last step, although I 
found your article very useful in getting buckminster to do what I wanted.

> Btw, unrelated to this topic, but since you're using hudson + buckminster 
> as well:
>  I'm currently working on a feature for better target platform support in 
> the hudson plugin. My idea was to have a build publisher similar to 
> 'Archive Artifacts' that takes a directory to archive as well as a name 
> under which this target platform will be made available.
>
> In all other jobs that use a buckminster build step you may then select 
> the available target platforms from a drop down box. That will cause the 
> plugin to set the buckminster targetPlatformPath to the archived target 
> platform and also introduces the job that creates the TP as an upstream 
> project. That means: if you build the target platform again, all 
> downstream projects (projects that reference this TP) will be build again.
> Sounds useful to you? Any additional ideas for that?
> >

This does sounds interesting. Does this mean that the target platform would 
not have to be re-created everyime? That could speed up the builds 
considerably. It could be esepcially useful where a few products use the 
same target platform. For example RCP+EMF is a common one for me. Do you 
expect to use a seperate hudson task for creating the target platform? It 
would mean that your product build is structured well so that hudson can 
bypass the target platform creation, which your command line builds would 
not.

Thanks,
Tas