Automating Your Natural Build Process – Legacy Coder Podcast #2

Legacy Coder Podcast

How can you automate the build process for your application based on Software AG’s Adabas and Natural? I talk about our journey towards a completely automated build from scratch after each push to Git in the second episode of the Legacy Coder Podcast.

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How to automate the build process for an Adabas/Natural application

• Why would I want to automate the build process?
  • What hurts should be done more often!
  • No more long integration phases before each release!
  • You’ll get a faster time to market for new features.
  • You can get rid of knowledge silos concerning the release of your application.
• What steps may need to be automated?
  • Upload (transfering the Natural source code to the server)
  • Compile (CATALOG, STOW, CATALL etc.)
  • Unit Tests (e.g. with NatUnit, see Unit Testing Natural Applications)
  • Deployment (the actual release of the new version on the target stage)
  • Restarting RPC servers or whatever individual steps might be necessary in your environment
• What tools are available for automating the Natural build process?
  • It all starts with Git or any other versioning control system (Subversion, TFS, CVS).
  • You can use Jenkins for Continuous Integration.
  • Software AG’s command line tools (ftouch etc.) can be scripted.
  • Even the CATALL can be scripted by calling into Natural BATCHMODE.
  • NaturalONE’s ant scripts for uploading and compiling Natural sources.
  • Any additional tool that you might need (Bash scripts etc.)
• How can I get started?
  • Make your project fully compilable. There can be no compile errors whatsoever.
  • Start with a single step, e.g. automate only the compile step first.
  • Script everything (e.g. with Bash) right from the beginning. You can easily call these scripts from Jenkins later on.
  • Hook Jenkins up to your source code repository. It provides plugins for every major system (e.g. Git, Subversion).
  • Try to automate the build with Jenkins. It’s completely free and easy to setup. Perhaps ask a Java colleague if he can help you.
• How can you go even further than what’s possible today?
  • Try to automate imports of Adabas data that’s important for your application.
  • Try to automate Adabas schema migrations.
  • Implement feature toggles for more fine grained control over your application’s functionality at runtime.

Recommended reading

• Continuous Integration (introduction to CI by Martin Fowler)

• Active Record Migrations (see how Rails handles database migrations)

Links

• Permalink for this Podcast episode
• RSS feed for the Legacy Coder Podcast
• Git – a free and open source distributed version control system
• Jenkins – The leading open source automation server

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