Test EarlyTest EarlyThis blog is written by the employees of Stelligent Incorporated. We are passionate about building software quality into the development process using the right tools and processes for the occasion. We seek to make code more defect-resistant and enjo 
Articles
Jump into Groovy and Grails
2009-03-23 14:04:00 My friend Andy Glover will be leading a two-day training class in Reston, VA on April 2nd and 3rd, 2009. If you haven’t attended any of Andy’s training sessions, you’re missing out. Having worked with Andy for several years, I can tell you first hand that he’s got unique combination of depth and breadth in technical skills…while making the material he’s covering extremely interesting. The two-day course contains 16 hands-on labs, so you’re not just walking out with a bunch of theory. Therefore, if you want to get up to speed with Groovy and Grails in a short amount of time, I highly recommend you register for this course. Groovy is a dynamic language that runs on the Java platform. It makes programming easier and more powerful, while taking advantage of everything that’s been built up around Java. Grails is a framework, built on Groovy, to help you quickly develop web-based applications. Test Early is spons... More About: Jump
Screencast on using Hudson Continuous Integration
2009-03-17 13:31:00 The Integrate Button website (from Paul Duvall’s book on Continuous Integration ) recently published a screencast on using the Hudson Continuous Integration server - along with Subversion, Ant, HSQL and other tools. Click the image below to get started. The screencast demonstrates the following steps: Checkout source files from the Subversion repository - locally Run the automated build locally Commit files to Subversion Download, install and configure Hudson - from Hudson website or from IntegrateButton scripts Make a code change (with error) and checkin files Get notified of error, automatically, via Hudson Fix code errors, commit change and see results in Hudson Test Early is sponsored by Stelligent | Stelligent is hiring experts like you! More About: Screencast
5 easy questions for Paul Duvall
2009-02-28 16:35:00 Jurgen Appelo who writes a blog on Understanding Development & Management asked Stelligent CEO Paul Duvall to answer 5 easy questions about his toughest challenge, software development and other interesting topics. His answers join a list of software luminaries such as Steve McConnell, Grady Booch, Mike Cohn, Ron Jeffries, Mary Poppendieck and Alistair Cockburn. Test Early is sponsored by Stelligent | Stelligent is hiring experts like you! More About: Questions , Easy
If it’s not in the System, it doesn’t exist
2009-02-12 01:10:00 I like repeatable processes. To me, it’s a waste of time to do the same thing more than once. I’m also reminded of this when I start repeating answers to the same questions. When considering knowledge companies, virtually everything valuable to us are our people and information, not physical assets. As I said in “Fire your Best People…”, if information is locked inside someone’s head, they are a less valuable resource. It’s all about sharing: files, knowledge, pertinent information from emails and so on. If the asset only exists on one person’s machine, or worse: their head, and is relevant to others, your company has a problem. When considering software, if all of the assets necessary to create working software haven’t been committed to the version-control repository, the software doesn’t exist. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Then, why do so many projects and companies fail to follow this simple rule? If I was cynical... More About: System , Exist
Hands-free database migration
2008-11-11 22:41:00 It can be a significant burden to manually apply upgrades to an existing database. Moreover, it’s often an error-laden activity. IBM developerWorks’ recently published an article on this topic for Paul Duvall’s (Stelligent CTO) popular Automation for the people series called Hands -free database migration. Database s are often out of sync with the applications they support, and getting the database and data into a known state is a significant challenge to manage. Learn how the open source LiquiBase database-migration tool can reduce the pain of managing the constant of change with databases and applications. Test Early is sponsored by Stelligent | Stelligent is hiring experts like you! More About: Free
Is easyb Easy?
2008-09-24 14:14:00 Last week, JavaLobby published an article about easyb called “Is easyb Easy ?”. Yes, that’s exactly what you will find out by reading this article. easyb is a BDD framework for the Java platform written by Andrew Glover. This article goes in detail about how to write a 1. Scenarios within Stories 2. Run these Stories from Ant 3. Generate a report. Check out the article to find out what the verdict was. Also, give it a try and let us know your verdict as well. Test Early is sponsored by Stelligent | Stelligent is hiring experts like you!
But I don’t like to learn new things
2008-09-23 21:39:00 http://wondermark.com/d/445.html Test Early is sponsored by Stelligent | Stelligent is hiring experts like you! More About: Things , Learn
Ant or Gant?
2008-09-23 14:02:00 Yes, this is exactly what I am frequently asked by my clients and many developers. It isn’t easy to answer this question. There are several projects using Ant. Should you run away from Ant just because there is a new cool tool out there called Gant? Should you switch to Gant just because you dislike XML? Not at all. Let’s take a closer look and see what might make you switch to Gant. When to choose Gant? 1. Complicated Build Files. If your ant build files are becoming too complicated, and hard to manage, it’s time to see if using Gant can help. Let me explain what I mean by complicated build files. If you have too much of conditional logic within your build files, say something similar on the lines shown below in Listing 1: Code Listing 1: <if> <isset property="sqlserver"/> <then> <do something here/> </then> </if> <if> <isset property="oracle"/> ...
Roy Osherove on TDD
2008-09-22 18:48:00 Roy has some provocative thoughts on TDD and getting developers to write unit tests. I don’t agree with all of them, but it’s worth a read. Some of his interesting points: 99% of the developers out there aren’t ready for the “testability” message Don’t call them ‘mocks’ or ’stubs’ - say things like ‘we need to isolate this class’ Unit Testing has a very high learning curve, and all the tools are making that learning curve higher Try to avoid record/replay style testing Don’t advocate ‘one true way’ to do unit testing. Accept other approaches that are different from your preferred approach. I suggest you read the whole thing. Test Early is sponsored by Stelligent | Stelligent is hiring experts like you!
Javadoc or Doxygen?
2008-09-10 16:43:00 In the last two articles, “UML Diagrams within Javadocs” and “Visual Documentation of Ant Dependencies in 3 Simple Steps” we saw how easy and valuable it was to automate technical documentation. By using open source tools, we were easily able to provide good technical documentation within a few minutes, and at no cost at all. We were also able to keep this up-to date by adding additional tasks to our Ant build files, and run them from our CI Server(Hudson in our case) on commit and nightly builds, and also publish the results. In this article, I will be showing you how to use yet another tool called Dxoygen for generating technical documentation based on your source code. We all have used Javadoc and have been using it for a long time, right? So, you may ask what’s the need to have another tool which produces the same HTML documentation? Doxygen has a slight edge over Javadoc and here are a few reasons why you should consider using the same: 1. With Ja...
Hudson - Tips and Tricks
2008-06-06 15:18:00 Hudson is an open source CI server that is by far the easiest one to configure. Second to ease of use is Hudson?s impressive plug-in framework, which makes it easy to add features. For instance, Hudson has a plug-in for tracking FindBugs issues, PMD issues, and CheckStyle issues over time as well as code coverage. ... More About: Tips , Tricks , Tips and Tricks , Hudson
Groovy Sparklines
2008-05-22 16:46:00 Everyone loves sparklines, and if you want to build them using Groovy , here’s some code that I took from a fabulous example in JRuby, and modified: package com.stelligent.gsparkyimport org.jfree.chart.JFreeChart import org.jfree.chart.axis.NumberAxis import org.jfree.chart.plot.XYPlot import org.jfree.chart.renderer.xy.StandardXYIte mRenderer import org.jfree.data.general.Dataset import org.jfree.data.xy.XYSeries import org.jfree.data.xy.XYSeriesCollection import org.jfree.chart.ChartUtilities class GSparky { def DEFAULT_HEIGHT = 30 def DEFAULT_WIDTH = 150 ... More About: Brothers
Interview with Joshua Bloch on InfoQ
2008-05-19 16:50:00 InfoQ recently published an interview with Joshua Bloch, who is the author of “Effective Java”– an updated second edition was released, which includes some tips with dealing with Java’s generics, autoboxing, and annotations, to name a few. “Effective Java” is one of the best books I’ve ever read regarding the Java language and has served ... More About: News , Interview , Glover
Rhapsodized Continuous Integration in Ireland
2008-05-16 22:15:00 If you are in Ireland (or close enough to get there easily!) the week of June 9th, then you’ll want to come to the International Conference on Agile Processes and eXtreme Programming in Software Engineering as I’ll be giving a tutorial on Continuous Integration ! The tutorial will walk students through a series of exercises on ...
Making your life easier with soapUI
2008-05-14 15:33:00 For any developer looking to test web services, there are a number of tools out there that seem to fit the bill. When you need one that allows you to interact and create functional and load tests with relative ease, soapUI is bound to be the tool you can’t live without. To help get ... More About: Life , Tutorial , Owens
Steve Yegge on Dynamic Languages
2008-05-12 21:55:00 I don’t always agree with Mr. Yegge, but this is a great presentation/script on Dynamic Languages with some very interesting ideas and discussion topics. One point that he never actually got to, but one that I think is worth more discussion - how do you maintain a million-line codebase w/out static types? My answer is that with ... More About: Steve , Brothers , Agile , Publications
Three commands for Subversion enlightenment
2008-05-07 03:08:00 Mastering the art of command line jujitsu is something every developer (regardless of OS) should strive for. While OS UIs are becoming more and more slick and helpful tools are abundant, possessing the ability to drop into a console and efficiently knock something out (find . -iname *.java | xargs egrep -i “todo” anyone?) has ... More About: Glover , Enlightenment , Commands , Subversion
Selenium RC and Proxy Chaining (Double Proxies)
2008-04-30 21:21:00 We had a proxy problem with Selenium RC today. The site-under-test is behind a proxy, and has the same domain name as the production site (let’s call it shop.mystore.com). Normally, developers set their proxy server in their browser, which then causes requests for shop.mystore.com to go to the proxy ... More About: Brothers , Double , Proxies , Proxy
The ThoughtWorks Anthology : Book Review
2008-04-30 13:55:00 The ThoughtWorks Anthology by ThoughtWorks is a collection of essays which covers a broad range of problems facing IT industry and developers in particular throughout the software development life cycle. You’ll find tons of pragmatic advice to improve the efficiency of your development efforts. In this book, you’ll find essays on varied topics like refactoring build ... More About: Book Review , Review , Agile , Book
Interesting Clover Behavior - wiping out coverage database between test tas
2008-04-23 21:43:00 This was discovered with Clover 2.2.1 We have a build.xml file with the following pseudo-flow: clover-setup // this causes all future compilations to use the clover compiler to instrument the files. compile javac _all_source_ test_A javac _unit_test_source_ // yes, this is a subset of all source junit _unit_tests_ test_B javac _unit_test_source_ // yes, this is a subset of ... More About: Interesting , Brothers , Behavior , Database , Test
Scrum training May 5th and 6th
2008-04-21 17:14:00 Jim York, a long time Stelligent friend, a Certified Scrum Trainer and lean and agile coach, is conducting a Certified ScrumMaster class May 5-6 in Vienna, VA. Learn the essentials of working as ScrumMasters, Product Owners, and Scrum team members in this highly-interactive 2-day class. Jim creates an energized learning environment where participants ... More About: Training , Agile , Glover
Have a rip snorter of a time at CITCON Asia-Pacific!
2008-04-18 16:53:00 Calling all blokes and sheilas– this year?s Asia -Pacific CITCON will be in Melbourne, Australia on June 27th & 28th– registration is now open so claim your spot before space runs out (space is limited to the first 150 tall poppies, surfies, and all around dags)! If you dream about CI, yabber about TDD, live ... More About: Time , Asia Pacific
Handy Dandy Hudson trick
2008-04-17 19:23:00 Let’s say you have a fairly complicated build structure, with multiple batch files that fire off different aspects of the build (even if, at the end of the day, they just call ant). And let’s assume that for various historical reasons, these batch files encapsulate their environment variables using SETLOCAL and ENDLOCAL. At first glance, this is ... More About: Trick , Handy , Hudson
Quick Guide to Selenium RC
2008-04-11 16:48:00 So you want to build a set of automated tests using Selenium against your webapp. I’m going to assume you have already figured out how to launch your app and set the database into a known state. Now, you want to write some tests that mimic visiting the website and interacting with the UI in ... More About: Guide , Quick
Free Webinar on Continuous Integration
2008-04-08 17:28:00 Wednesday, April 16th: 3:00pm ? 4:00pm ET Are you seeking to improve the development practices of your organization? Has your team adopted a continuous integration strategy? Are you looking for the best tool to manage your builds? If so, this webinar hosted by Paul Duvall, author of the Jolt award-winning book on Continuous ... More About: Integration , Free , Webinar
Java power tools bootcamp this May
2008-04-03 02:38:00 John Ferguson Smart, a long time friend of Stelligent and author of O’Reilly’s “Java Power Tools ” will be holding the Java Power Tools bootcamp this May 12th through the 15th in San Francisco, CA. The timing couldn’t be better– it’s right after JavaOne! The course is 4 days of intense hands on workshops covering TDD ... More About: Agile , Glover
Saving the day with BDD
2008-04-02 03:15:00 The software development process is a big black box for basically everyone on the planet earth, except for a few, proud individuals who speak geek and wear silly tee-shirts. To everyone else who doesn’t read code or wear silly tee-shirts but work with people who do, the last bit of sanity they have is during ... More About: Agile , Glover , Saving
Matrix-based security in Hudson doesn?t work on IE
2008-03-25 20:57:00 If you are using IE and trying to configure Matrix -based security, beware. It doesn?t work no matter how many times you click the Add button. At this point, don?t panic. Rather than changing the config.xml and manually adding all the users and setting their permissions, download Firefox, and you will be easily able to configure ... More About: Security , Work , Hudson
Versioning a Hudson job configuration
2008-03-24 19:00:00 Hello! Andy has graciously invited me to post here at testearly.com, and I thought I would start off with some of my experiences with configuring Hudson . This is a crosspost from my blog, but I suspect it will get a lot more traffic here. … Let’s say you’re using Hudson as your build/Continuous Integration tool. ... More About: Configuration
Q&A with Jolt award winner
More articles from this author:2008-03-24 15:22:00 InformIT has published a Q&A with Stelligent’s CTO, Paul Duvall. Paul shares his thoughts on adopting CI, the future of CI, and of course, his thought provoking blog entry. Check it out! ... More About: Jolt , Award , Winner 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
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