category: java


Maven Surefire not running Unit Tests

 Friday February 20, 2009
 
I recently encountered a frustration situation where no matter what I tried, I could not get Maven's Surefire plug-in to find and run my jUnit tests. I tried everything, including re-installing my build environment, updating my Maven install to the latest version, switched workspaces, nothing....

I finally resolved the issue by completely cleaning our my local Maven configuration settings (settings.xml) and then re-running my build.

Sometimes its the smallest issues that take the longest to fix.  
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Bye bye Waterfall, Hello Agile

 Saturday February 16, 2008
 
Come Monday I'll be starting the envisioning phase of a 4 month project aimed to enhance the overall user experience in one of our flagship applications. I'm definitely excited about the project not only because there will be some really cool components to build but also because the project will be run using an Agile methodology. For the past several years I've been working on high dollar(long running), complex business apps that followed the Waterfall approach. Each of these projects adhered to the phases of your standard Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and at times seemed to drag on in the least exciting phases.

Agile development is definitely different than your traditional waterfall based project, not only from a structure point of view (phases and such) but also in it's principles, which are;
  • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  • Working software over comprehensive documentation
  • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  • Responding to change over following a plan
 
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Switching from PVCS and ANT to Subversion and Maven2

 Wednesday August 15, 2007
 
A few months ago there was a collaborative effort from the developers at my work to get rid of our then current version control software, PCVS and excruciating Build Test Deploy strategy using Ant and AntHillPro. Although it took many months of convincing and proving out to senior leadership, we were successful in transforming our environment to use Subversion for version control, Maven2 and CruiseControl. The effort in establishing an enterprise ready environment for ourself was large but it was completed and is running smooth.

Although we still have PVCS and AnyHillPro for some existing (legacy) projects the goal is to have all new Java development done with the new tools. Being that, that is the case the new release of my project (Collision Prevention Program) has begun the development stagegate and one of the tasks assigned to me was to get our project ported over to the new environment. So for the past few days I have been slowly getting our project and developer workspaces up to speed so that in another few days the rest of the team can hit the ground running.

There are a few developers (2 to be exact) at my work that have a deep understanding of Maven so it has been critical that I learn as much as I can so that I can assist my team (and others) on questions if those resources are unavailable. As fate would have it, those resources for the most part have been unavailable during my journey to get us ported. I have had some definite headaches in getting everything set up, but in the end they have been resolved and my project and team are entirely set up for the months of development to come.

This experience (like many) has really enforced my confidence an aptitude in picking up new technology. I feel that I'm at a point with Maven and Subversion that I could handle most situations if they arise. I am by far no expert on each matter but I would consider that I have a strong working knowledge of our new environment. Hopefully in the weeksmonths to come I will continue to learn and increase my understanding of the products and processes and if time permits I hope to blog about the experience.  
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