Eyefodder http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/ en Copyright 2009 Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:29:37 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Code Coverage with Flex - a headless agent for CI builds In my last blog post I gave details of how I user the modified coverage viewer in an automated build to follow the trend of code coverage over time. The trouble with this approach was that there was a problem either with the localConnection or the code that uses it and there was a wide variance of the values being reported. This post shows you how I fixed it by creating a headless coverage reporter that you can drop into your test harness and remove the need for a second application altogether.

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2009/07/code_coverage_with_flex_a_head.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2009/07/code_coverage_with_flex_a_head.shtml Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:29:37 -0500 Code Coverage with Flex - ANT build for running the viewer In my last post, I gave you my elegant extension hack for generating EMMA style reports from FlexCover. This post covers the first route I took to incorporating this in my build process. It does work, but it's not very consistent in its reporting and I'll explain why at the end...

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2009/07/code_coverage_with_flex_runnin.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2009/07/code_coverage_with_flex_runnin.shtml Sat, 25 Jul 2009 19:47:08 -0500 Code Coverage with Flex - creating EMMA formatted reports Over the last few months I have adopted Hudson as my build machine of choice as it is just so easy to setup and administer. Another thing I really like is being able to watch the trend of the number of tests in my test harness over time. It's not the best metric, but it does act as a reasonable motivator.

A slightly less crude metric is code coverage, which measures the amount of an application that gets exercised when it's run. FlexCover is a very cool tool for this and props to my colleague - Alex Uhlmann and Joe Berkowitz of Allurent for the great work they've done. There is a great UI for exploring code coverage in detail and it can also export xml formatted reports on coverage.

The thing is, I want to be able to track this coverage over time in Hudson, just like I can with the number of tests. I achieved this by extending FlexCover to output EMMA formatted reports...

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2009/07/flex_code_coverage_process_par.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2009/07/flex_code_coverage_process_par.shtml Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:16:58 -0500 flexunit eclipse plugin alpha I've been kind of quiet recently for three reasons:

  • Its summer

  • Work has been insanely busy

  • I've been beavering away on a new plugin for eclipse


The plugin is designed with one key goal in mind: shortening the develop-test feedback loop. It integrates eclipse and the flexunit framework to make our lives as developers easier.
The plan is to release the plugin on labs as soon as possible (I'm about to go on holiday for a couple of weeks so it'll be October at the earliest...) but I thought I'd give you an early heads-up on what I've been doing when its been too hot to walk the New York streets...

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2007/08/flexunit_eclipse_plugin_alpha.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2007/08/flexunit_eclipse_plugin_alpha.shtml Thu, 30 Aug 2007 07:26:37 -0500 Continuous Integration with Flex - a better log parser About a year ago, I posted a six part series explaining how to set up a continuous integration process for your Flex projects. Since then I have been refining the process when I have had a spare moment. One of the hassles I found when trying to setup CI on a new machine was getting the python based flash log parser working. I decided to remove the python dependency altogether and create a jar that parses the flash logs.

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2007/06/continuous_integration_with_fl_7.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2007/06/continuous_integration_with_fl_7.shtml Wed, 13 Jun 2007 10:01:34 -0500 CruiseControl on the Mac - modifying the build script to work x-platform So, I thought I was doing pretty well, getting svn working on the mac, installing cruisecontrol, even getting SCPlugin working with unsigned certificates. Then I tried to run my ant build, and ended up having all sorts of problems getting my mac debug player to run. Some investigating and help from the ANT folks later, and I have a solution

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2007/06/cruisecontrol_on_the_mac_modif.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2007/06/cruisecontrol_on_the_mac_modif.shtml Continuous Integration Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:10:22 -0500 Restarting cruisecontrol on Mac OSX OK, so for those of you who know Unix better than me (which is probably most of you) this post will be like teaching your granny to suck eggs, but for the rest of us, it took me some working out how to stop and start the cruisecontrol server instance on the mac...

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2007/06/restarting_cruisecontrol_on_ma.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2007/06/restarting_cruisecontrol_on_ma.shtml Continuous Integration Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:30:48 -0500 CruiseControl on Mac OSX So, I've got this shiny new mac provided by my new employers, and so I figured I'd put it to use as a CruiseControl build manager. I found the process reasonably simple but, just like the process of setting up Subversion and SCPlugin, there are a couple of extra steps I figured I'd share...

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2007/06/cruisecontrol_on_mac_osx.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2007/06/cruisecontrol_on_mac_osx.shtml Best Practices Fri, 08 Jun 2007 12:25:38 -0500 Subversion and Finder integration for the Mac I just had to sort out getting subversion up and running on a mac. It's not quite as simple a process as on a PC; there are a couple of extra steps I thought I'd share...

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2007/06/subversion_and_finder_integrat.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2007/06/subversion_and_finder_integrat.shtml Best Practices Fri, 08 Jun 2007 11:37:37 -0500 LinkBar tied to component states I just did a quick extension of the LinkBar so you can tie it to the states of a component. I haven't tested it throughly yet, so if you find anything weird in there, let me know...

usage:



<components:StateLinkBar dataProvider="{states}"/>

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2006/08/linkbar_tied_to_component_stat.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2006/08/linkbar_tied_to_component_stat.shtml Wed, 16 Aug 2006 12:57:27 -0500 How I built those firefox plugins to google search a site Ok, so Mathias just asked how I managed to get the plugins to just search one site. I started to write a comment explaining it, but got a little long, so here's Paul's quick n dirty ghetto way of getting a firefox plugin to search just one site...

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2006/08/how_i_built_those_firefox_plug.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2006/08/how_i_built_those_firefox_plug.shtml Thu, 10 Aug 2006 16:04:43 -0500 Finding Flex Facts Faster so today, firefox decided to die a death on me. I choked it doing some Flex debugging and as a result I lost the functionality in my search bar. This got me thinking about what would really be useful for me is a way to search the places I usually go for flex info - the livedocs and the flexcoders mailing list. What I've ended up with is a quick way to search both these resources at the same time...

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2006/08/finding_flex_facts_faster.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2006/08/finding_flex_facts_faster.shtml Flex Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:53:59 -0500 FlexUnit / ASUnit deathmatch results As I mentioned a few posts ago, I am looking into how asunit and flexunit can fit into our continuous integration set up. The move into AS3 has given me an opportunity to reassess how the 2 frameworks fit my/our needs. The prior post set out the criteria I was testing against - here is what I found...

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2006/07/flexunit_asunit_deathmatch_res.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2006/07/flexunit_asunit_deathmatch_res.shtml Best Practices Sun, 02 Jul 2006 12:08:53 -0500 If you think the IT industry is bad at estimating... You should try the moving industry.

I have just hung up my boots at Fidelity to move deep undercover doing some work in New York (via Washington DC, but thats a whole other story). I'm initially going to be staying in a hotel, so I decided to put my furniture in storage. I'm also moving in kind of a hurry, so I needed to have the movers pack my stuff for me. So I asked them for a quote based on a 1 bedroom apartment, a kitchen's worth of saucepans & crockery, a PC, some furniture and a few bits and bobs.

The quote was for 3 men for 3 hours and about 3-400 dollars of packing costs. This seemed pretty reasonable (I really dont have too much stuff), so I decided to go with these guys. Anyways, I have just been charged for 3 men for 9 hours, and also been charged for 900 dollars of packing costs. I'm still so angry about this I'm not sure if its a scam, or if I didnt give them enough information, but to get an estimate out by a factor of 6 is just plain ridiculous...

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2006/06/if_you_think_the_it_industry_i.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2006/06/if_you_think_the_it_industry_i.shtml Sun, 25 Jun 2006 20:29:29 -0500 FlexUnit UI factory When I started looking into how we could use flexunit in our CI build, I was struck by how the UI is closely linked to the actual running of the test suite. I really wanted to be able to use the supplied flexunit GUI out of the box - after all, it does everything the developer needs, and yet in order to have the results understood by our build process, we would need the results printed out differently.

To acheive this, my Flexunit test harness uses a factory method pattern to decide how torunthe test suite. Here's how...

]]> http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2006/06/flexunit_ui_factory.shtml http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2006/06/flexunit_ui_factory.shtml Best Practices Fri, 16 Jun 2006 15:19:51 -0500