For many years now, it has been a goal of mine to get feedback as early as possible when developing software. Past blog entries here and here have discussed how we can approach increased feedback. A tweet from Jason Gorman mentioned his list of tools that provide continuous feedback on his code and design: “Emma, Jester, XDepend, Checkstyle and Simian”. This inspired me to write a post on how I approach setting up project reporting and my IDE to provide increased feedback. This article will be the first part of a series on “Extreme Feedback from My Tools” and will focus on Maven 2 configuration and reporting.

Maven is my tool of choice for managing builds, versioning, deployment, and test execution. Although, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if teams I worked on used Ant, make, or other scripting methods to manage these, but it tends to be more difficult overall. For those who are alright with using Maven, here is a look at different aspects of a typical POM file configuration I use:

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
      <configuration>
        <source>1.5</source>
        <target>1.5</target>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>2.4.2</version>
      <configuration>
        <includes>
          <include>**/When*.java</include>
        </includes>
        <redirectTestOutputToFile>true</redirectTestOutputToFile>
        <trimStackTrace>false</trimStackTrace>
        <useSystemClassLoader>false</useSystemClassLoader>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>

The above portion of the POM file are configurations for all Maven execution scenarios for this project. The first plugin, “maven-compiler-plugin”, sets the expected source code compliance and the JVM version that the compiled binary will target. The “maven-surefire-plugin” executes tests such as those developed with JUnit and TestNG. Because my approach is to take a more BDD-like naming convention and style for test cases, this POM is configured to execute unit tests that start with the word “When” in the test source code directory, by default this is “src/test/java”. Having the full stack trace from test execution issues is essential to effective debugging of the automated build and tests, therefore the configuration makes sure that they are not trimmed in the output file. Finally, some code that I have created in the recent past needed to find classes on the Maven classpath and through much debugging I found out that the system class loader was used by default with surefire so I now make sure to set it up to use the Maven class loader instead.

<reporting>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>maven-pmd-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>2.3</version>
      <configuration>
        <linkXref>true</linkXref>
        <targetJdk>1.5</targetJdk>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
      <artifactId>cobertura-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>2.4</version>
      <configuration>
        <formats>
          <format>html</format>
          <format>xml</format>
        </formats>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
      <artifactId>jdepend-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    </plugin>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
      <artifactId>dashboard-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    </plugin>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
      <artifactId>findbugs-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>2.2</version>
    </plugin>
</plugins>
</reporting>

Reports are effective at giving the team indicators of potential problems in their project artifacts early. Teams tend to find that trends are more valuable then specific targets in the generated reports. If the code coverage is going down we ask ourselves “why?”. If more defects are being detected by source code analysis tools then we can look at how we can change our approach to reduce the frequency of these issues. The 5 plugins used in this POM report on different perspectives of the software artifacts and can help to find problematic trends early.

• PMD is for source code analysis
  
• Cobertura is for code coverage
• JDepend is a package dependency analyzer
  
• FindBugs detects bugs in code
• The dashboard plugin shows the results of the reports in a single view

When the continuous integration server successfully executes the build and automated tests, the Maven reporting command is executed to generate these reports. This happens automatically and is shown on our video monitor “information radiator” in the team area.

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>junit</groupId>
    <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
    <version>4.7</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.mockito</groupId>
    <artifactId>mockito-all</artifactId>
    <version>1.8.0</version>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

We make sure to update the POM to use JUnit 4 so that our team can use annotations and better names for the tests. Also, Mockito has become my favorite mock objects framework since it stays away from the “replay” confusion of other mock frameworks (or their old versions at least) and also has a BDDMockito class that enables our team to use the given/when/then construction for our tests.

Once your POM file is configured with these reporting plugins, you can generate the reports by executing the ’site’ life cycle in Maven:

mvn site

Part 2 of this series of articles will discuss configuration of an Eclipse IDE environment for Extreme Feedback.

During STIQ’s development, we created a Maven 2 plugin, imaginatively named maven-stiq-plugin. This plugin did only 1 thing: start up the STIQ server for your project without having to run Java from the command line. In the past couple of days, I have finally had enough time and desire to develop integration of exporting STIQ tests into Selenium RC compliant “selenese” so they can also be executed during your Maven integration-test cycle in the 2.2-SNAPSHOT version. So, lets get down to the “how”.

First, add the STIQ Maven 2 repository to your POM (pom.xml file for your project) as shown below: (NOTE: updated with correction on URL from original posting)

<repositories>
...
  <repository>
     <id>STIQ Sourceforge</id>
     <url>https://storytestiq.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/storytestiq/trunk/www/maven2/</url>
  </repository>
</repositories>

We, also, must put the STIQ Maven 2 repository into our plugin repositories within the POM because so that we can find the maven-stiq-plugin to execute during the integration-test cycles: (NOTE: updated with correction on URL from original posting)

<pluginRepositories>
...
  <pluginRepository>
     <id>STIQ Plugins Sourceforge</id>
     <url>https://storytestiq.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/storytestiq/trunk/www/maven2/</url>
  </pluginRepository>
</pluginRepositories>

Next, we will put in the maven-stiq-plugin configuration.

<plugin>
 <groupId>net.sourceforge.storytestiq</groupId>
 <artifactId>maven-stiq-plugin</artifactId>
 <version>2.2-SNAPSHOT</version>
 <executions>
   <execution>
   <id>export</id>
   <phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
   <goals>
     <goal>export</goal>
   </goals>
   <configuration>
     <pageRootPath>repository</pageRootPath>
     <suiteWikiPagePath>ProjectRoot.StoryTests</suiteWikiPagePath>
   </configuration>
 </execution>
 <execution>
   <id>exec</id>
   <phase>integration-test</phase>
   <goals>
     <goal>exec</goal>
   </goals>
   <configuration>
     <userExtensions>src/main/resources/user-extensions.js</userExtensions>
     <browserType>*firefox</browserType>
     <suiteFile>target/stiq/ProjectRoot.StoryTests.html</suiteFile>
   </configuration>
   </execution>
 </executions>
</plugin>

Now, to tell you a little bit about what is going on in the above configuration. The <groupId> and <artifactId> elements describe what plugin to grab from the plugin repository and use in the project. In the executions section, we define 2 separate execution elements. The first execution is called “export”. This execution will occur during the “pre-integration-test” cycle within the full Maven 2 build life cycle. The goal, similar to an Ant target, on our maven-stiq-plugin that you will be “export”, which is the goal that exports our StoryTestIQ acceptance tests as “selenese” to run within the Selenium RC server. The configurations shown above are <pageRootPath>, which is the directory located below your top-level project directory where the StoryTestIQ tests are located, and <suiteWikiPagePath>, which is a wiki page location for the top-level suite including all of the tests to export. If you don’t already have STIQ tests, please go to http://storytestiq.sf.net to find out how to get started.

The second execution element is called “exec”. This execution will run during the “integration-test” cycle in the Maven build life cycle and will execute the exported tests using Selenium RC server. The configurations for this goal are <userExtensions>, which is where any new selenese actions are defined specific to your project, <browserType>, which is the web browser to execute the tests within, and <suiteFile>, which is where the exported selenese tests were generated during the “export” goal execution. As a convention, the generated selenese file will be located under the “target/stiq” directory by default with the name of the file as <suiteWikiPagePath>.html.

Now you can run the usual ‘install’ command in your project’s top-level directory:

mvn install

This should compile and execute all of your unit tests then during the integration-test phase it will run the maven-stiq-plugin goals, “export” and “exec” in that order. During the maven-stiq-plugin “exec” goal execution, the web browser will open up in the background and you will see the STIQ tests run. After the tests have executed, the web browser will close and the Maven build life cycle will complete.

NOTE: If you are having trouble with “*firefox” as <browserType>, then you might be seeing a current bug with Selenium RC server version 1.1.1. An upcoming release version will include a fix and we will update the dependency once we see the update. For now, the fix is to go back to Firefox version 3.5.3 or switch to using a different browser as listed here on the Selenium RC documentation.

There is still much more to do with the plugin before getting to a release version of 2.2. Please comment on this blog post with any suggestions or issues that you have with the plugin and it’s configuration. If you are interested, do a search on StoryTestIQ within this blog to find out more about using StoryTestIQ or visit the main project page http://storytestiq.sf.net. Thank you.

• Technical debt: tends to focused on the code and reveals itself in duplication and code smells
• Quality debt: focuses on QA aspects of software development and shows up in growing bug databases and longer regression test runs
• Configuration Management debt: focuses on integration and release management aspects and becomes apparent with extreme branching and inability to recreate environments from scratch
• Design debt: focuses on design constructs of components within an application or enterprise infrastructure and is usually difficult to figure out until you are close to a deadline such handling production load
• Platform Experience debt: focuses on the people in the software creation process and usually involves extreme specialization and waiting on people to finish their part

Without further ado, here are the slides:

Also, here is the picture I use to discuss Managing Software Debt from high level in terms of maintaining and enhancing value of software assets:

AgilePalooza is a one day Agile conference on Friday May 29th at the San Francisco State University downtown campus. There will be two tracks: Learning Agility and Advancing Agility.

“Learning Agility” will be presentation style whereas “Advancing Agility” will use the open space format.

Speakers include David Hussman (DevJam), Chris Sterling (SolutionsIQ), Luke Hohmann (Enthiosys), Lee Henson (VersionOne Services) with special guests Ainsley Nies (open space co-facilitator) and Ian Culling (VersionOne CTO). When not presenting for the “Learning Agility” track speakers will participate in the open space.

Space is limited and the cost is low so please register soon if you would like to attend. For more information or to register please visit www.AgilePalooza.com.

Where?

San Francisco State University Downtown Campus, 835 Market Street, San Francisco. (Powell street BART station in the Westfield Center) – Map/Directions

When?

9am-5pm (check-in and continental breakfast starts at 8am)

Cost?

$69

Register here: www.AgilePalooza.com

SD West 2009 Conference & Expo
March 9–13
Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA
http://www.SDExpo.com/

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be teaching the following session at SD West 2009:

“Managing Software Debt: Continuing to Deliver High Value as Systems Age” on Friday, March 13th from 3:30-5:00pm

SD West is where the software development community gathers to learn about the latest business-critical technologies, network with peers, connect with innovative vendors and get inspiration from industry visionaries. The comprehensive conference program covers today’s most important topics including cloud computing, concurrent programming, dynamic languages, agile processes, security, testing and much more.

Super early bird conference discounts of up to $400 expire Friday, January 16.  As a speaker, I can also offer you an additional $100 off the VIP Pass. Simply register at http://www.SDExpo.com with the code 9ESPK to get your discount.

Check out all the excellent educational opportunities SD West 2009 has to offer at http://www.SDExpo.com.

I look forward to seeing you in Santa Clara!

I would like to add to this listing with some of the tools I have come to use often:

• Maven 2.x+ (http://maven.apache.org/)
• JBoss (http://www.jboss.org/)
• Rio/Jini/Apache River (http://incubator.apache.org/river/RIVER/index.html)
• Apache Commons (http://commons.apache.org/)
• Subversion (http://subversion.tigris.org/)
• Apache Web Server (http://httpd.apache.org/)
• Bouncy Castle (http://www.bouncycastle.org/)
• Time and Money (http://timeandmoney.sourceforge.net/)
• Spring Framework (http://www.springframework.org/)
• Hadoop (http://hadoop.apache.org/)
• Ruby on Rails (http://www.rubyonrails.org/)

This is some of the open source that I have and still use on my projects. What are your favorites that were not on the list?