Continuing my last post about using a service such as Twitter (or Yammer or equivalent) to create “pull” notifications that serve the individual, I’ve set up a Meister workflow to update the status of the Twitter handle @builds after a successful build.

I’ve set up a JBoss build in Meister involving a web service and consumer. This was originally developed in MyEclipse, but the Meister Eclipse plug-in allows the native Eclipse build to be externalized (a better approach than Maven). So, I am just dealing with that, which simulates a development continuous integration or QA build.

I have a workflow that has the two main Meister build tasks, “Generate Build Control File”, and “Build Targets”. The first gathers local and server metadata consolidating that into something like a makefile or Ant script depending on your perspective. The second is similar to running make or Ant.

This is a simple workflow to illustrate our messaging technique. Normally, we’d use an email notification task, but I’ve replaced that with an activity called “Tweet”. This calls a simple Perl script, called omtweet.pl that uses Net::Twitter. Here is why we use Perl a lot – the code is simple to update your Twitter status:

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use Net::Twitter;
 
my $twit = Net::Twitter->new(
  {username => "myuser", password => "mypass"; });
 
my $result = $twit->update(
  {status => "My current Status"});

I created a slightly more elaborate script that takes arguments and passes in a “Build Successful” message. If Java is your thing, look at Davanum Srinivas’ post and for .NET, there is Twitteroo.

Next, I run the build and we see the steps complete in real time on the workflow monitor.

The key is the last step, of course:

And, the proof is in the pudding:

I used the $(JOB_NUMBER) macro in Meister to get an incremental build number passed to omtweet.pl. Of course, following @builds and choosing device updates, I got a text message on my cell phone. I tried to get a picture of my cell phone with the message, but I haven’t worked out how to do that yet and it turned out terrible.

Well, this is a simple example, with a lot of possibilities. Meister wraps all build output in HTML and pushes to a web server. I’d like to include a shortened URL for that in the update. Currently we don’t have anything outside of a firewall, maybe I’ll try Yammer for that.

If you have any other suggestions, let me know. @seanblanton

There has been some talk around using physical, colored, lamps to notify build results (pragmatic automation, Carlos Sanchez, Richard Durnall, Alberto Savoia).

The idea comes from Lean Manufacturing principles developed by Toyota applied to software development. An “andon” paper lamp was a way to let other workers know there was a problem on the assembly line. The idea for builds is that while a build is running, an amber light flashes, letting other developers know not to run a build, a green light signifies the last build was completed successfully, and a red light means the build is broken and needs to be fixed.

While I’m sure it is an entertaining exercise to set this up, some simple software automation could achieve the same results, and it has obvious faults, like what if I am working from home?

Email is the de facto standard for build notification. There is a hardcoded mailing list somewhere and you get the email, even if you don’t want it, and you have to go and check your mail to receive it.

Twitter, on the other hand, puts the user in control of the notifications in true Web 2.0 fashion. Tweets are also ideal for receiving notifications via cell phone, where email is generally not. Consider the following cases:

• I can follow the build when I want, and unfollow when I want. No going to an admin to remove me from the list.
• I can turn on device updates so I get an SMS message about the result (maybe an important release is coming up), or I can turn off device updates, say, when I’m on vacation.
• I can retweet (forward) the build notification.
• You can put links in the message. Meister uploads all build logs in HTML format to a web server and we would include the link to that.

About a year ago, I used Meister with a post-build activity to Tweet the build result after a build. The activity was a simple Perl script using Net::Twitter. Let’s just say this experiment sort of fell on deaf ears.

Now I’m ready to roll with this again and you can follow my progress. I had created a Twitter account, @builds, for this purpose. In a day or two, you’ll see some tweets from that guy from one of my builds.

I’m interested in what other people have to say. Meister already uses Eclipse RCP as it’s front end, but most other build tools are still command-line and in the 1970’s. Let’s bring build management tools into the 21st century with Web 2.0 features.

I’ll be trying out BlogDesk – looks good. I have been using Microsoft Word 2007, which was OK, but it was difficult to assign categories. I was actually uploading the blog, then logging in to WordPress and applying the categories afterwards.I’ll also be blogging more frequently, so I have to make the process as smooth as possible. If you have another fave, let me know. You can send me a Tweet, also: at seanblanton.