Pragmatic Project Automation: How to Build, Deploy, and Monitor Java Apps

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Entry Level Book
Review: "Pragmatic Project Automation" is all about how to automate the tasks
associated with building, testing, and deploying your application. The
assumption is that your project is a Java project, and all the tools
are based around that. Most of the automation is done with Ant, an
automation tool written in Java and primarily used for building Java
projects. Since I do most of my work in java and ant, this is right
down my alley.

"Pragmatic Project Automation" is one of the "Pragmatic Starter Kit"
series of books. The words "Starter Kit" should be taken seriously.
If you are acting as build master for your first project, this is a
great book. It will have you up and running your one-step builds in no
time. It provides numerous "best practices" for running automatic
builds, unit tests, and deployment. Unlike the original "Pragmatic
Programmer," which was a collection of generally good ideas and
practices to follow, the Pragmatic Starter Kits are specific recipes to
follow for good results.

The book assumes that you are using Java; the ideas behind the
practices are universal and can be applied to any kind of project, but
the specific advice is for Java only. The specific tools recommended
by the book are Ant for scripting, CVS for version control, and Cruise
Control for scheduling. Obviously, other tools can be used instead,
but the recipes in the book will no longer work. The ideas remain valid, however.

I wish this book had been around 5 years ago when I first started
building Java projects. As it is, I had to learn much of this by trial
and error. Most of it is just simple, good sense, like having all your
source in version control and having a script to check out your code
and build the finished application. But like all good sense, it is not
as obvious and wide spread as it should be. Every project I've been on
could have used a good dose of pragmatic project automation.

Though most of the book was already familiar to me, I did learn several
things. One of the great ideas was to make build failures publically obvious through the use of lava lamps! If the build, or build tests, failed, the suggestion is to turn on a red lava lamp which is in a publically visible location. Ant does not actually have a lava lamp task, so they cleverly provide instructions on automating the lava lamp with the use of an X10 lamp module. When the build succeeds again, turn off the red lamp and turn on a green one. I haven't yet implemented this, but I'd like to.

Using ant for builds and CVS for version control is pretty standard,
nowadays. I think most projects do this or something equivalent (though
the statistics on this show that statement to be hopelessly
optimistic). This book does move on to a more advanced, and less
standard tool. They recommend performing builds automatically whenever
code is checked in, and their tool of choice is Cruise Control.

They provide nice recipes for setting up and running Cruise Control.
In my job, inspired by the book, we decided to try it and found it
quite simple to set up and use. It requires a little more
infrastructure than, say, CVS in that it runs inside a java container
like Tomcat, but if you are a Java shop you probably already know how
to manage Tomcat. If you don't, maybe it is time to learn.

If you are a new build master on a Java project, read this book
immediately. Even if you've been doing it for a while, you probably
won't be wasting your time if you read it. The book is well written
and accurate. It has a nice style that moves along nicely. At 176
pages it is not a very long read, a welcome change in computer books.
The author tells you what he has to say, then shuts up--there's no
padding here.

All in all, a good book. I'm glad I read it. I wish I'd read it 5
years ago.

Michael Hirsch

Rating:
Summary: Quality information in a small package...
Review: I just finished reading a very useful book... Pragmatic Project Automation by Mike Clark (Pragmatic Bookshelf). If you've ever wondered how to make your life easier as a Java developer, this will answer some of your questions.

Chapter list: Introduction; One-Step Builds; Scheduled Builds; Push-Button Releases; Installation and Deployment; Monitoring; Resources; Pragmatic Project Automation: Summary

The basic premise here is that most development teams spend far too much time managing the compile/build/deployment process because it's a manual one. And with manual processes comes the real possibility of errors and neglect. You should be spending more time coding business solutions and less time baby-sitting the infrastructure. Clark takes you through some of the freely available open source tools that can help you make the build process repeatable and automated. By doing this on a regular, consistent basis, you'll have higher quality software and faster response times to errors because you can narrow down to a matter of hours (or even minutes) when an error was introduced into a code stream.

Along with the "why" of doing this, you'll learn enough about the components to get you started. Ant will help you automate the compile and build process. cron scheduling can set up your builds to happen on a regular basis without your intervention. CruiseControl can take cron and Ant to a higher level and also send out notifications on the results of the builds. CVS is covered as a repository that should be where your code is stored and versioned. And NSIS is covered as a way to create an automated installation package for your most current release. While none of these technologies are covered in an all-inclusive way, there's enough here to get you started and to whet your appetite to pursue the matter further.

This isn't a big book... 161 pages. But there's a lot of practical advice and wisdom packed in there. Definitely a "must have" book if you're spending too much time as the "buildmaster guru" on your projects...

Rating:
Summary: by far the weakest of the Pragmatic series
Review: I'm a huge fan of the Thomas and Hunt Pragmatic series...but this current book is weak. Perhaps because its not written by Thomas and Hunt themselves, perhaps because it was so closely tied to a particular CMS, I don't know, but the book seemed to light.

As an example, early in the book there was a teaser about using a lava lamp as a build indicator with a note that it would be discussed later. The later discussion never explained the details of 'how' to this...expounding instead on why it was a good idea.

I'm not saying this book is 'bad'...just that its not 'great' like the other Pragmatics.

Rating:
Summary: I'll be calling this my "precious"...
Review: If you're involved in any type of commercial Java projects, you owe yourself to pick up this book. I'm not kidding.

"Pragmatic Project Automation", the third book in the Pragmatic Programmers' Starter Kit series, authored by Mike Clark, is an invaluable asset for automating the grunt work of your Java development projects and raising your standards regarding quality, lead times in bug fixing, and eventually, the motivation of your whole team.

I read the book over a weekend in two sittings and enjoyed every minute of it. Mike has put together a series of high quality tutorials for setting up a repeatable build process using Ant, scheduling the build process using shell scripts, cron/at, and eventually CruiseControl, while keeping in the spirit of pragmatic thinking. He then continues by showing how to automate your release process and software deployment -- with both simple shell scripts and an open source graphical installer tool. To finish, he talks about different techniques for monitoring your software for errors.

I honestly couldn't find anything to complain about this book -- except that I wouldn't have minded reading another 150 pages of it.

Rating:
Summary: May lamp glow green
Review: Project Automation is an investment in the project infrastructure. This investment will pay huge dividends. Few developers want to spend their time fussing over a build or creating the new release, but it has to be done. This book shows how to get it done without sacrificing a developer to the process. At first, I was a little skeptical as to how much automation could be accomplished, but now I am sold. The time and aggravation saved are tangible dividends to this investment.

With anecdotes, coding examples, and a sharp wit, the author progresses from touting the value of project automation to showing how to do it. He starts the process of convincing the reader that automation is a good thing with an amusing story to illustrate the need and the potential. Using readily available tools like Ant and CruiseControl, the author carefully explains each step. While there is sufficient coverage on the use of the tools for the examples, reference documentation will be necessary to "roll your own".

On our last big project, I now realize that frequent automated builds would have saved a lot of time, which was in short supply. Because they became so painful we did them less frequently, rather we should have increased the frequency. I would consider this book an essential part of a technical lead's toolkit. Once the team can experience the benefits of continuous integration and project automation, they probably would not want to go back.

Rating:
Summary: Your team needs this book
Review: This book is a worthy successor to the previous two Pragmatic Starter Kit books. You've got unit testing down. You've got version control processes. But, you're a programmer who is manually slaving over all of these processes not to mention system monitoring, builds, and deployments.

Pragmatic Project Automation gives a wonderful, step by step recipe for automating all of the time-consuming, error-proned activities of a (Java) project. It also instructs and motivates the reader to think in this way, so that future opportunities for automation don't go unrecognized.

This one is a "must have".

Rating:
Summary: Short and focused, with unique practical content
Review: This book is very short and tight, weighing in at only 150 pages. The book concentrates on automating the Java build, deployment and test process. It covers Ant, Nant, Maven, CruiseControl and other tools. But even if your specific tool or environment isn't covered you will still gain from the experienced based insight in the book, even if you can't use the code samples directly.

The text of the book is fresh, easy to read, and often funny. Graphics are used sparingly and effectively.

I certainly recommend this book for any build master, or someone stuck with the build master role. Though I really recommend the whole series for all engineers because they, as a set, will help you round out your entire skill set.

Rating:
Summary: Will save you time and trouble. Highly recommended.
Review: This book will save you from hours of work and from many headaches. Mike Clark's "Pragmatic Project Automation" will show you how to automate any aspect of your project that you find repetitive.

Clark starts by describing how to automate a build script using Ant. There are entire books on this subject but "Pragmatic Project Automation" does a great job of distilling the essentials of what you need to know to get started (and for most projects in total). Once you have an automated build, the next step is having it run automatically. Clark describes how to do this with Cruise Control, a tool that will build a system whenever new code gets checked in.

This book goes well beyond just automated builds, however. We next learn how to automate releases, including generating all necessary distribution files. Next up are how to automate the installation and deployment processes. Finally we learn how to monitor both our build process and our deployed applications. The book even goes so far as to tell us how to monitor the build process with a pair of lava lamps.

I highly recommend this book to anyone working with Java applications of any size.

Rating:
Summary: Good value for the money
Review: This is a good book. There is not much to lurn, as experienced Java developpers already know the road to continuous integration.
This book is primarily useful to convince your coworkers and managers that a good development process is key to the success of a quality software development.
The wireless Java lamp turning red when the build process failed is a bit far fetched, but most of the ideas are excellent.

For a novice to intermediate "build master", this book is a must have.



Rating:
Summary: The book I recommend most
Review: This third book in the "Pragmatic Starter Kit" series is the book I most enthusiastically recommend to developers and project teams. It completes the other two books, adding another crucial technique, and showing in the process how source control and unit testing can really help a project in practical ways. Interestingly, that also means that this third book serves as a good introduction to the other two.

Automation is one of those practices that can lead you to other good practices, teaching you to appreciate them and finally understand just how valuable they are. Every developer would do well to "catch the automation bug," and in the process they will learn a lot about other valuable techniques. Mike Clark understands that, and his book on project automation also serves as a terrific introduction to the larger practice of quality software development.