Question

How do you handle build failure and error reporting in Ant, including notifications and log management? Provide examples of strategies you have used.

Answer 1

To handle build failure and error reporting in Ant, I use the following strategies:

1. Try-catch-fail: Encapsulate tasks within try-catch blocks using from ant-contrib library. On catching an exception, execute a custom fail task.

Example:

<taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antlib.xml"/>

<trycatch>

<try>

<javac srcdir="src" destdir="build/classes"/>

</try>

<catch>

<fail message="Build failed due to compilation errors."/>

</catch>

</trycatch>

2. Notifications: Use email notifications with task for sending build status reports. Configure SMTP server, recipients, subject, and body.

Example:

<mail mailhost="smtp.example.com" tolist="team@example.com" from="noreply@example.com" subject="Build Status">

<message>Build ${status}. Check logs for details.</message>

</mail>

3. Log management: Utilize log4j or similar logging frameworks for detailed logging. Configure appenders, log levels, and output formats.

Example (log4j.properties):

log4j.rootLogger=INFO, file

log4j.appender.file=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender

log4j.appender.file.File=build.log

log4j.appender.file.MaxFileSize=10MB

log4j.appender.file.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout

log4j.appender.file.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{ISO8601} [%t] %-5p %c - %m%n

<taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antlib.xml"/>
<trycatch>
  <try>
    <javac srcdir="src" destdir="build/classes"/>
  </try>
  <catch>
    <fail message="Build failed due to compilation errors."/>
  </catch>
</trycatch>

<taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antlib.xml"/>
<trycatch>
  <try>
    <javac srcdir="src" destdir="build/classes"/>
  </try>
  <catch>
    <fail message="Build failed due to compilation errors."/>
  </catch>
</trycatch>