I am creating a Microsoft Installer (.msi file) using the Wixtoolset (Windows Installer XML). This installer must automate the installation of an existing .exe program (named installer.exe below) and copy a custom configuration file (named settings.conf below) to the target directory. In addition the installer must modify the configuration file using the InstallFiles command below. But the timing of events is critical. If the executable installer runs too early, it fails or exhibits strange behavior. And if the executable installer run too late in the install sequence, it overwrites my modified configuration file with the generic values. I believe this can be done by assigning a string to the Before or After property value. What Before or After property assignment will allow the executable to run properly but not overwrite the configuration file I moved by the CopyFile element? Here is my Wixtoolset XML code.
<Property Id="CONFIGFOLDER" Value="C:\acme\config" >
<Feature
Id="ConfigurationFile"
Title="Configuration File"
Level="1"
<ComponentRef Id="CMP_ACME_Config_File" />
</Feature>
<DirectoryRef Id="TARGETDIR">
<Component Id="CMP_ACME_Config_File" Guid="">
<File
Id="ACME_Config"
Source="MySettings.conf"
KeyPath="yes"
<CopyFile Id="Copy_ACME_Config"
DestinationProperty="CONFIGFOLDER"
DestinationName="settings.conf" />
</File>
</Component>
</DirectoryRef>
<Binary
Id="InstallerEXE"
SourceFile="installer.exe" />
<CustomAction
Id="Launch_Installer"
BinaryKey="InstallerEXE"
Impersonate="yes"
Execute="deferred"
ExeCommand=""
Return="check" />
<InstallExecuteSequence>
<Custom Action="Launch_Installer"
Before="InstallFiles">
</Custom>
</InstallExecuteSequence>
</Property>
I can't explain exactly why this works but assigning "InstallFiles" to the "After" property in the "Custom" element seems to do the trick.
<InstallExecuteSequence>
<Custom Action="Launch_Installer"
After="InstallFiles">
</Custom>
</InstallExecuteSequence>
I would like to have a foreach task like this, which iterates over all the files/directories in a directory "A" -
<foreach param="dirname" absparam="absname" target="subtask">
<fileset dir="${dir.destination}/${dir.subdir}/">
<type type="file" />
</fileset>
</foreach>
The target "subtask" should check if the counterpart of the file/folder exists in another directory "B" (I am comparing directory A and B basically), and return either of the following if it does not -
a flag.
name of the file.
Following is some code for reference -
<target name="subtask">
<if>
<filesmatch file1="${file1}" file2="${file2}"/>
<then>
Return false. But how?
</then>
<else>
Return true of name of the file. How?
</else>
</if>
</target>
Note - It is okay if this can be done without calling a target. I am not sure if the logic can be fit inside the foreachtask itself. Could not find any such thing in the phing documentation.
Basically, I should be having the list of file names which are not present in the directory B, by the end of the loop.
You may also read this question of mine, if you can give some pointers to solve the issue in some other way.
Update
Rephrasing this question, since I feel that the problem description is not clear. The phing documentation says, a target has no return value -
Targets are collections of project components (but not other targets)
that are assigned a unique name within their project. A target
generally performs a specific task -- or calls other targets that
perform specific tasks -- and therefore a target is a bit like a
function (but a target has no return value).
I don't understand why is it designed so. With this bounty, I would like to know if there is some workaround for me other than having to define my own custom tasks in PHP, and then set properties -
$this->getProject()->setNewProperty('modifiedElements', implode("\n\n",$modifiedElementsArray));
which can be accessed in the build file
I have a target which checks whether my production code base has any differences from the expected git revision -
<target name="compare_prod_with_expected_revision">
<input propertyname="box.git_version">
Enter git version of the production codebase:
</input>
<exec command="git reset --hard ${box.git_version}" dir="${dir.scratchpad}" />
<!-- Scratchpad brought to revision ${box.git_version} -->
<echo>Verifying whether production is at revision ${box.git_version}..</echo>
<exec command="diff -arq --exclude='.git' ${dir.scratchpad}/${dir.subdir} ${dir.destination}/${dir.subdir}" outputProperty="diffList"/><!-- #TODO ignore.swp files in this step. Diff says .swp files present in production code. But doing ls -a there does not show the same. -->
<php function="strlen" returnProperty="productionDeviationFromExpectedBranch"><!-- #TODO - find how to not show this step during build process. Put it in a target and set hidden="true" -->
<param value="${diffList}"/>
</php>
<if>
<equals arg1="${productionDeviationFromExpectedBranch}" arg2="0" />
<then>
<echo>Verified production is at revision ${box.git_version}</echo>
</then>
<else>
<echo>Differences - </echo>
<echo>${diffList}</echo>
</else>
</if>
</target>
Now, I want to phingcall this target and would like to access some property set by it.
I think I understood your purposes, and at the same time I feel like you chosen not the optimal tool of doing this.
As you mentioned in your question, official documentation on phing is clear about tasks (targets):
Targets are collections of project components (but not other targets) that are assigned a unique name within their project. A target generally performs a specific task -- or calls other targets that perform specific tasks -- and therefore a target is a bit like a function (but a target has no return value).
Targets should be components of your application, which execute specific task, atomic task. It could be initialization task, configuration fetching, compilation step, assets preparation and dumping, deployment task, clean-up task, etc. There's no "output", returned by target in the standard sense, but the result of target execution is the success of execution itself: success or failure.
One should not try to put way too much of logic into such project targets, as it is not intended to do complicated calculations, do heavy logical decisions, etc. I mean, Phing can do it, such things are possible, but this setup would be bulky, unreadable, and hard to scale/re-factor.
With Phing you can easily define conditional execution and branching of logical flow, you may define the sequence of execution of tasks (dependencies) - this is what makes it laconic and elegant. Keep targets as simple as possible, split the project into small, finished logical tasks.
Based on the projects I've been working with, the biggest targets, probably, were initialization stage and configs fetching. Here's some example, to understand what it might contain, I took it from real project:
<target name="init_configuration">
<echo msg="Define initial configuration for the deployment..." />
<if>
<not>
<isset property="host" />
</not>
<then>
<property name="host" value="dev" override="true" />
<echo message="The value of hostname has been set to ${host}" />
</then>
<else>
<echo message="The value of hostname is ${host}" />
</else>
</if>
<if>
<not>
<isset property="version" />
</not>
<then>
<property name="version" value="1.0.0" override="true" />
<echo message="The value of version has been set to ${version}" />
</then>
<else>
<echo message="The value of version is ${version}" />
</else>
</if>
<property name="host_credital_file" value="config/hosts/${host}.properties" />
<property file="${host_credital_file}" />
<available file="${host_credital_file}" property="hostfilefound" value="true"/>
<fail unless="hostfilefound" message="Missing Hostfile configuration file (${host_credital_file})!" />
<echo msg="Configuration is done" />
</target>
Other targets were extremely simplistic, they are normally – 1-5 lines long, and do only small purpose, small task. This would be, probably, the best recommendation when working with Phing.
The logic which you are trying to put on shoulders of Phing is possible, but would be extremely bulky.
Consider the point: how much quicker, easier, and more readable the same thing could be done with simple bash script in your example. Or even to write small CLI utility in PHP, which will do the job elegantly and quick. After that in Phing you'll leave parametric target which will execute this "revision diff script" from CLI.
Phing is a great tool for what it is designed for, but it can't be an optimal choice for every purpose. Just do not put way to much responsibility and logic into it.
As a workaround, for more complicated things it's better to combine Phing with with something specialized: bash scripting, PHP CLI, nodeJS (+ Grunt, Gulp, etc)... and just to add calls of a Phing targets later.
This is the way I managed to have targets which behave like functions:
<target name="-console-cmd-return-property" hidden="true">
<exec command="${command}" checkreturn="${checkreturn}" logoutput="${logoutput}" outputProperty="${outputProperty}"/>
</target>
It gets invoked like this:
<phingcall target="--console-return-property">
<property name="command" value="ps auxwww"/>
<property name="checkreturn" value="true"/>
<property name="logoutput" value="false"/>
<property name="outputProperty" value="ps_output"/>
</phingcall>
Of course it works because it relies on existing exec, and it is not generic...
The target "subtask" should check if the counterpart of the file/folder exists in another directory "B" (I am comparing directory A and B basically), and return either of the following if it does not -
a flag.
name of the file.
You could compare two directories without using a foreach task like this:
<project name="Phing Build Test" default="print-missing" basedir=".">
<resolvepath propertyName="dir.a" path="path/to/dir/a"/>
<resolvepath propertyName="dir.b" path="path/to/dir/b"/>
<target name="print-missing">
<apply executable="echo" failonerror="false" returnProperty="files.found" outputProperty="missing">
<srcfile/>
<fileset id="srcfiles" dir="${dir.a}" includes="*">
<present present="srconly" targetdir="${dir.b}"/>
</fileset>
</apply>
<if>
<equals arg1="${files.found}" arg2="0"/>
<then>
<echo msg="${missing}"/>
</then>
</if>
</target>
</project>
I have a directory structure like so:
-css
---subdir1
------common.css
---subdir2
------common.css
------custom.css
---subdir3
------common.css
------styles.css
I'm trying to loop each directory in Phing, and subsequently minify each file into a single hashed filename within each directory using the YUI compressor. The result would look something like this:
-css
---subdir1
------1973a613f7c87b03dbe589e6935a09bd.min.css
---subdir2
------1973a613f7c87b03dbe589e6935a09bd.min.css
---subdir3
------1973a613f7c87b03dbe589e6935a09bd.min.css
I therefore need to know each directory that I'm within so I can output my minified scripts to it.
These are my two targets:
<target name="minify">
<echo msg="Minifying CSS and JS files with YUI at ${yuicompressor}" />
<foreach param="filename" absparam="absfilename" target="runyui">
<fileset dir="${publicdir}/css">
<include name="*.css" />
<include name="**/*.css" />
</fileset>
</foreach>
</target>
<target name="runyui">
<filehash file="${abspathtopwd}" hashtype="MD5" propertyname="filehash" />
<echo msg="java -jar ${yuicompressor} -v --line-break 5000 --type css ${absfilename} >> ${abspathtopwd}/${filehash}.min.css" />
<exec command="java -jar ${yuicompressor} -v --line-break 5000 --type css ${absfilename} >> ${abspathtopwd}/${filehash}.min.css" />
</target>
Where:
yuicompressor is the path to the yui compressor jar
publicdir is just an absolute path to my applications public directory
abspathtopwd is the property I wish to use for the "current iteration's directory"
How can I get the current working directory (or pwd if you prefer) in the current foreach iteration with Phing? All I can see I have access to is the relative and absolute paths to the files themselves.
Note: I'm aware that this current solution would create a new file for each input file, but that's what I'm aiming to fix with abspathtopwd.
Thanks!
For anyone interested in this problem, check out this post, which led me to:
<foreach param="dir" absparam="absdir" target="minify.directory">
<fileset dir="${publicdir}/css">
<type type="dir" />
<depth max="0" min="0" />
</fileset>
</foreach>
This allows me to specify a directory constraint when iterating, thus passing through the relative and absolute directory name as opposed to the filename.
Here is my Script:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project name="createAndPopulateDB" default="deploy">
<property name="sql.connstring" value="Provider=SQLOLEDB;Server=G-PC\sqlexpress;Integrated Security=SSPI" />
<property name="createDB" value="BuildTestDatabase.sql" />
<property name="populateDB" value="CreateTables.sql"/>
<target name="deploy">
<echo message="* Connecting to ${sql.connstring}"/>
<foreach item="File" property="sql.script">
<in>
<items>
<include name="${createDB}" />
<include name="${populateDB}" />
</items>
</in>
<do>
<echo message="* Executing ${path::get-file-name(sql.script)}"/>
<sql connstring="${sql.connstring}" delimiter="go" delimstyle="Line" batch="false" source="${sql.script}"/>
</do>
</foreach>
</target>
</project>
The NAnt script is supposed to call two tsql programs. The first tsql is designed to drop a database if it is present, and if it isn't, create it. The second checks to see if a table is present, and if so, delete it. Similarly if it isn't, it populates the created database with a simple table.
My question is why does it run the populateDB script first?
I found that the best way to determine the order in which the tsql programs are run is through a depends attribute attached to separate targets. This will run them in a predetermined order and is extremely easy to follow logically if the NAnt script is a part of a repository.
I am working on a NANT build project to build a VS project. One of the build file has a property definition like this:
<property name="App.dir"
value ="${directory::get-current-directory()}\Source\App"/>
This property value has been used in many other places. For example:
<exec program=".\test.exe" workingdir=".">
<arg line="${App.dir}\project1\resources\res1.resx /arg2"/>
Here I need to use <arg line=...> instead of <arg value=...> is to pass specified 2 arguments to text.exe.
when I build this NANT project on another developer's machine, I got a build failure. Finally I found out that the ${App.dir} on that developer's machine is a path in long-form and there is a space in the path. As a result, the arguments to text.exe were actually 3 or more.
I am not sure if there is any way to convert the ${App.dir} path to short name with no spaces:
<property name="App.dir" value ="????"/>
where ???? is something to convert "${directory::get-current-directory()}\Source\App" to a path name in a short-form. Is there any way to do that?
I am using NANT in Windows XP. In Unix/Cgywin, there is one function to get dos name:
cygpath::get-dos-path
Can I use this one in my NANT build file?
Use <arg value="">, from the NANT docs:
value - A single command-line argument; can contain space characters.
I think that I found two ways to resolve the issue. Instead of converting path to DOS path (8.3 name), I can use quotes around my arguments. The second method is the one as ovado recommened to use <arg value=.../> for a single argument value. Here is my test example. All the test files are in my C:\Test folder. First, I created a test bat:
#REM This is the content of Test.bat file.
#echo COMMAND PARAMETERS: %*
#echo FIRST PARAMETER: %1
#echo SECOND PARAMETER: %2
dir %1
Then I created a test build file (Test.Build)"
<project>
<target name="Test" description="Test with one line" failonerror="true">
<property name="App.dir" value ="C:\Program Files"/>
<exec program="test.bat" workingdir=".">
<arg line='"${App.dir}\Microsoft*.*" ${App.dir}\test2 /test3' />
</exec>
</target>
<target name="Test2" description="Test2 with values" failonerror="true">
<property name="App.dir" value ="C:\Program Files"/>
<exec program="test.bat" workingdir=".">
<arg value="${App.dir}\Microsoft*.*" />
<arg value="${App.dir}\test2" />
<arg value="/test3" />
</exec>
</target>
</project>
Here I used " to close my first argument in <arg ='"..."' .../>. Notice that I used single quote for my attribute line.
In this way, I run my build by NANT.EXE. I got the result as I expected:
C:\Test>NANT.exe -buildfile:test.build Test
Test:
[exec] COMMAND PARAMETERS: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft*.*" C:\Program Files\test2 /test3
[exec] FIRST PARAMETER: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft*.*"
[exec] SECOND PARAMETER: C:\Program
[exec] C:\Test\>dir "C:\Program Files\Microsoft*.*"
[exec] Volume in drive C has...
....
I got the same result with the alternative Test2,
C:\Test>NANT.exe -buildfile:test.build Test2
...