December 11, 2015

Windows 7 Unable to drag and drop with mouse issue resolution

Hi friends,

Today, when I was working suddenly I felt like my mouse is not performing drag and drop.

I found a simple solution
  1. Press and hold any file in file explorer with your primary (left mouse) button
  2. Click "Esc" (Escape) key on your keyboard
  3. You should be able to perform drag and drop of files now

Please send your feedback and comments to psrdotcom@gmail.com


November 27, 2015

Creating Symbolic Link (Symlink) in Windows 7

Hi friends,

In Linux, it is easy to create symbolic link (symlink) with "ln" command.
But what about in windows?

I found one GUI and command for creating the symbolic links in windows.

Pre-requisites

  1. Visual Studio 2005 redistributable
  2. Link Shell Extension
  3. Download the above executables from here based on OS and system architecture
  4. For Windows 7 64-bit, I have downloaded the following highlighted in black box

Procedure

  • Install the Visual Studio 2005 redistributable
  • Install Link Shell Extension
  • You should be able to see an option in context menu
  • Select the file/folder
  • Right click and select the option "Pick Link Source"

  • Now, the file is been picked
  • Navigate to go the destination folder where you want to create the symbolic link
  • Right click on the empty space of the folder
  • Select Drop As and select "Hardlink or Symbolic Link" based on your requirement


  • You should be able to see the file type as .symlink


References

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/

Please send your feedback and comments to psrdotcom@gmail.com

November 26, 2015

Add (append or prepend) text along with excel functions/formula in a single cell

Hi friends,

Today I have come across a situation where i want to have the cell to descriptive and to have summation of some cells. I have got information on how to do it. Please find below

Input Data:

3
4
2

I want a cell to be on top those with description and summation value

Expected output data:

Sum = 9
3
4
2

To get the output, I have written the following function

Syntax:
="Text"& function

Example:
="Sum = "& SUM(A2:A4)

We can append and prepend the text to excel function to combine text and numbers as well.

Please send your comments and feedback to psrdotcom@gmail.com

November 18, 2015

Jenkins installation and configuration on Windows with plugins for Java/J2EE projects

Hi all,

It's been quite long time that, i haven't posted any blog.

This time, I'm going to describe how we can install and configure Jenkins for continuous integration for Java projects including plugins for test reports etc.


Jenkins Setup and configuration of plugins

Pre-requisites

  1. Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.7 and above
  2. Browser (Preferred: Firefox/Chrome)
  3. Maven (if required)
  4. Set the environment variables and path (JAVA_HOME, MAVEN_HOME, path)

Download

·         Visit http://jenkins-ci.org/ on browser
·         Select the Java web archieve (.war) file to download
·         Latest war file link: http://mirrors.jenkins-ci.org/war/latest/jenkins.war

Installation

  • Once the war file has downloaded, please run the war file from command prompt with the following command
    • Cmd> java –jar Jenkins.war
    • Note: Don’t close the command prompt where you had run the Jenkins war.
  • Open the URL http://: in browser for configuration.
    • By default hostname is localhost and port is 8080
    • Default URL: http://localhost:8080
  • Jenkins homepage shall be displayed
  • By default, there will be no authentication (login) and security.
  • First thing, you need to do is configure the system with the following items
  • Click on “Manage Jenkins” and select “Configure System”
  • [Optional] Update home directory

Configuration

Create new job

·         To create a new job, click on the “New Item” from home page
·         Select the project type based on your implementation and requirement
·         After selecting any one from the type of the project specified above, we need to setup project

Job properties

Project name

Enter the project name

Description

Enter the project description with an overview

Discard build

This controls the disk consumption of Jenkins by managing how long you'd like to keep records of the builds (such as console output, build artifacts, and so on.) Jenkins offers two criteria:
    Driven by age. You can have Jenkins delete a record if it reaches a certain age (for example, 7 days old.)
    Driven by number. You can have Jenkins make sure that it only maintains up to N build records. If a new build is started, the oldest record will be simply removed.
Jenkins also allows you to mark an individual build as 'Keep this log forever', to exclude certain important builds from being discarded automatically. The last stable and last successful build are always kept as well.
 
Figure 1: Discard old builds

Run the build on specific node

Assigning labels to node

Manage Jenkins->Manage Node->Select node->Click Configure->Labels->enter the label(s)

Assigning node to build for execution

  • Click on the build
  • Select Configure
  • Check “Restrict where this project can be run” option
  • Enter the label which is been assigned to the node

Restrict where this project can be run

If you want to always run this project on a specific node/slave, just specify its name. This works well when you have a small number of nodes.
As the size of the cluster grows, it becomes useful not to tie projects to specific slaves, as it hurts resource utilization when slaves may come and go. For such situation, assign labels to slaves to classify their capabilities and characteristics, and specify a boolean expression over those labels to decide where to run.

Valid Operators

The following operators are supported, in the order of precedence.
·         (expr)
o   parenthesis
·         !expr
o   negation
·         expr&&expr
o   and
·         expr||expr
o   or
·         a -> b
o   "implies" operator. Equivalent to !a|b. For example, windows->x64 could be thought of as "if run on a Windows slave, that slave must be 64bit." It still allows Jenkins to run this build on linux.
·         a <-> b
o   "if and only if" operator. Equivalent to a&&b || !a&&!b. For example, windows<->sfbay could be thought of as "if run on a Windows slave, that slave must be in the SF bay area, but if not on Windows, it must not be in the bay area."
All operators are left-associative (i.e., a->b->c <-> (a->b)->c ) An expression can contain whitespace for better readability, and it'll be ignored.
Label names or slave names can be quoted if they contain unsafe characters. For example, "jenkins-solaris (Solaris)" || "Windows 2008"
Figure 2: Node specific project execution

Source Code management

Figure 3: Source code management
Please find the properties explanation below

Repository URL

Specify the subversion repository URL to check out, such as "http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/ant/". You can also add "@NNN" at the end of the URL to check out a specific revision number, if that's desirable. This works for Subversion Revision Keywords and Dates like e.g. "HEAD", too.
When you enter URL, Jenkins automatically checks if Jenkins can connect to it. If access requires authentication, it will ask you the necessary credential. If you already have a working credential but would like to change it for other reasons, click this link and specify different credential.
During the build, revision number of the module that was checked out is available through the environment variable SVN_REVISION, provided that you are only checking out one module. If you have multiple modules checked out, use the svnversion command. If you have multiple modules checked out, you can use the svnversion command to get the revision information, or you can use the SVN_REVISION_ environment variables, where is a 1-based index matching the locations configured. The URLs are available through similar SVN_URL_ environment variables.

Credentials

Add your credentials which are required to authenticate the repository URL

Local Module Root

Specify a local directory (relative to the workspace root) where this module is checked out. If left empty, the last path component of the URL is used as the default, just like the svn CLI. A single period (.) may be used to check out the project directly into the workspace rather than into a subdirectory.

Repository depth

--depth option for checkout and update commands. Default value is infinity.

·         Empty

Includes only the immediate target of the operation, not any of its file or directory children.

·         Files

Includes the immediate target of the operation and any of its immediate file children.

·         Immediates

Includes the immediate target of the operation and any of its immediate file or directory children. The directory children will themselves be empty.

·         Infinity

Includes the immediate target, its file and directory children, its children's children, and so on to full recursion.

·         as-it-is

Takes the working depth from the current working copy, allows for setting update depth manually using --set-depth option.

Check-out Strategy

Different types of svn checkout is possible while building the project.
Please find the available check out options below.

1.       Use 'svn update' whenever possible

Use 'svn update' whenever possible, making the build faster. But this causes the artifacts from the previous build to remain when a new build starts.

2.       Always check out a fresh copy

Delete everything first, then perform "svn checkout". While this takes time to execute, it ensures that the workspace is in the pristine state.

3.       Emulate clean checkout by first deleting unversioned/ignored files, then 'svn update'

Jenkins will first remove all the unversioned/modified files/directories, as well as files/directories ignored by "svn:ignore", then execute "svn update". This emulates the fresh check out behaviour without the cost of full checkout.

4.       Use 'svn update' as much as possible, with 'svn revert' before update

Do 'svn revert' before doing 'svn update'. This slows down builds a bit, but this prevents files from getting modified by builds.
Figure 4: Checkout types

Build Triggers

This section gives more options to automatically building the project

1.      Build whenever a SNAPSHOT dependency is built

 If checked, Jenkins will parse the POMs of this project, and see if any of its snapshot dependencies are built on this Jenkins as well. If so, Jenkins will set up build dependency relationship so that whenever the dependency job is built and a new SNAPSHOT jar is created, Jenkins will schedule a build of this project.
This is convenient for automatically performing continuous integration. Jenkins will check the snapshot dependencies from the element in the POM, as well as s and s used in POMs.
If this behavior is problematic, uncheck this option.

2.      Trigger builds remotely (e.g., from scripts)

Enable this option if you would like to trigger new builds by accessing a special predefined URL (convenient for scripts).
One typical example for this feature would be to trigger new build from the source control system's hook script, when somebody has just committed a change into the repository, or from a script that parses your source control email notifications.
You'll need to provide an authorization token in the form of a string so that only those who know it would be able to remotely trigger this project's builds.

3.      Build after other projects are built

Set up a trigger so that when some other projects finish building, a new build is scheduled for this project. This is convenient for running an extensive test after a build is complete, for example.
This configuration complements the "Build other projects" section in the "Post-build Actions" of an upstream project, but is preferable when you want to configure the downstream project.

4.      Build periodically

Provides a cron-like feature to periodically execute this project.
This feature is primarily for using Jenkins as a cron replacement, and it is not ideal for continuously building software projects. When people first start continuous integration, they are often so used to the idea of regularly scheduled builds like nightly/weekly that they use this feature. However, the point of continuous integration is to start a build as soon as a change is made, to provide a quick feedback to the change. To do that you need to hook up SCM change notification to Jenkins.
So, before using this feature, stop and ask yourself if this is really what you want.

5.      Poll SCM

This field follows the syntax of cron (with minor differences). Specifically, each line consists of 5 fields separated by TAB or whitespace:
MINUTE HOUR DOM MONTH DOW
MINUTE               Minutes within the hour (0–59)
HOUR    The hour of the day (0–23)
DOM     The day of the month (1–31)
MONTH                The month (1–12)
DOW     The day of the week (0–7) where 0 and 7 are Sunday.
To specify multiple values for one field, the following operators are available. In the order of precedence,
    * specifies all valid values
    M-N specifies a range of values
    M-N/X or */X steps by intervals of X through the specified range or whole valid range
    A, B ... Z enumerates multiple values
To allow periodically scheduled tasks to produce even load on the system, the symbol H (for “hash”) should be used wherever possible. For example, using 0 0 * * * for a dozen daily jobs will cause a large spike at midnight. In contrast, using H H * * * would still execute each job once a day, but not all at the same time, better using limited resources.
The H symbol can be used with a range. For example, H H(0-7) * * * means sometime between 12:00 AM (midnight) to 7:59 AM. You can also use step intervals with H, with or without ranges.
The H symbol can be thought of as a random value over a range, but it actually is a hash of the job name, not a random function, so that the value remains stable for any given project.
Beware that for the day of month field, short cycles such as */3 or H/3 will not work consistently near the end of most months, due to variable month lengths. For example, */3 will run on the 1st, 4th …31st days of a long month, then again the next day of the next month. Hashes are always chosen in the 1-28 range, so H/3 will produce a gap between runs of between 3 and 6 days at the end of a month. (Longer cycles will also have inconsistent lengths but the effect may be relatively less noticeable.)
Empty lines and lines that start with # will be ignored as comments.
In addition, @yearly, @annually, @monthly, @weekly, @daily, @midnight, and @hourly are supported as convenient aliases. These use the hash system for automatic balancing. For example, @hourly is the same as H * * * * and could mean at any time during the hour. @midnight actually means sometime between 12:00 AM and 2:59 AM.

Examples:
# Every fifteen minutes (perhaps at: 07, :22, :37, :52)
H/15 * * * *
# Every ten minutes in the first half of every hour (three times, perhaps at: 04, :14, :24) H(0-29)/10 * * * *
# Once every two hours every weekday (perhaps at 10:38 AM, 12:38 PM, 2:38 PM, 4:38 PM)
H 9-16/2 * * 1-5
# Once a day on the 1st and 15th of every month except December
H H 1, 15 1-11 *
Figure 5: Build triggers

Pre-Steps

Based on the project and available plugins, we can choose a pre-build setup if required.
Figure 6: Available pre-build steps

Build

Root POM

If your workspace has the top-level pom.xml in somewhere other than the 1st module's root directory, specify the path (relative to the module root) here, such as parent/pom.xml.
If left empty, defaults to pom.xml

Goals and options

Specifies the goals to execute, such as "clean install" or "deploy". This field can also accept any other command line options to Maven, such as "-e" or "-DskipTests=true".

Please find the maven project build example below
Figure 7: Build goals

Post Steps

Based on the project and plugin installed, the post steps will be displayed.
Figure 8: Available Post Steps

Build Settings

Based on the plugins installed, you will be finding the build settings and configure accordingly with health thresholds, health priorities, status thresholds.
Figure 9: Build settings advance options
Figure 10: Build settings

Post-Build Actions

Post build actions used to generate reports, archive artifacts etc.
Figure 11: Post build actions


Archive the artifacts

By selecting the archive the artifacts option, we can give the file which we can show it in the project dashboard for download purpose.
 

Figure 12: Archive the artifacts

Plugins and configuration

Jacoco Code coverage

1.       Add the respective dependencies in your project pom.xml
2.       Go to project configuration (Project->Configure)
3.       Select “Add post-build action” then select “Record Jacoco coverage report”

Figure 13: Jacoco coverage report

Performance Report

1.       Go to project configuration (Project->Configure)
2.       Select “Add post-build action” then select “Publish performance report”
Figure 14: Performance report setup
Make sure that you are running all the test in your build by giving the goal
Figure 15: Project goal to run testcases

Blockers and resolution

FATAL error: Perm Jen Space (Out of Memory)

Update the jenkins.xml in the program files directory with the following java arguments
-XX:MaxPermSize=512m -Xmx2048M

Dependencies download error

When we faced an issue with dependency download error, we have the following options.
  1. Re-run the build by cross verifying the project pom.xml
  2. Manually download the jar from the maven repository and place in the respective .m2 directory

Jenkins taking long time to restart after install/update plugin

Wait for some decent time around 10-15 min to Jenkins restart and then try one of the following methods
  1. Restart Jenkins from services/command line depending on the type of installation.
  2. If the above methods doesn’t seems to work then as last choice, restart the Jenkins machine

Modules

Project Types

Freestyle project

This is the central feature of Jenkins. Jenkins will build your project, combining any SCM with any build system, and this can be even used for something other than software build.

Maven project

Build a maven project. Jenkins takes advantage of your POM files and drastically reduces the configuration.       

External Job

This type of job allows you to record the execution of a process run outside Jenkins, even on a remote machine. This is designed so that you can use Jenkins as a dashboard of your existing automation system. See the documentation for more details.

Multi-configuration project

Suitable for projects that need a large number of different configurations, such as testing on multiple environments, platform-specific builds, etc.

Copy existing Item

Copy from the existing job

Please send your feedback and review to psrdotcom@gmail.com


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