Perforce's Java product line is now a full-fledged platform: users and developers can choose from a variety of standard and custom continuous integration and Agile workflow solutions supported directly by the Perforce Java platform, and they can develop their own Perforce-based Java solutions using the P4Java API from within standalone, GUI-based, or Java EE contexts. This session will illustrate how the popular continuous integration tools Ant, Maven, and Hudson have been tightly integrated into the Perforce platform—and vice versa) on top of the core P4Java API. Examples are drawn from the Perforce Java team's own use of these tools, as well as from the wider software world.

1. Continuous Integration For
Real: The Perforce Java
Platform
Hamish Reid
Perforce Software Inc.

2. OVERVIEW
• What do we mean by…
• Agile?
• Continuous Integration?
• Product line highlights:
• P4Eclipse + Mylin + MergeQuest
• P4Java
• P4Ant
• P4Maven
• (Hudson Perforce Plugin)
• (P4Java, P4D)
• The Perforce Java Team CI Workflow

3. WHAT DO WE MEAN BY “AGILE”?
• Adaptive processes and workflows:
• Feedback- and reality-driven
• Flexible goals
• Continuous processes and workflows:
• No surprises!
• Small increments in planning
• Small increments in delivery
• Small increments in effort
• There’s always some version of the final product
• Examples:
• Scrum, XP, Kanban

4. WHAT DOES “CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION” MEAN?
• The heart of agile processes…
(…but not just agile processes).
• Martin Fowler’s essentials:
• Integration is a non-event.
• Any individual developer's work is only a few hours
away from a shared project state.
• Individual work can be integrated back into that state in
minutes.
• Any integration errors are found rapidly and can be fixed
rapidly.
• Trades up-front workflow and infrastructure effort for
integration simplicity.
• Not for every product or workflow.

5. CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION ELEMENTS (1)
• Martin Fowler:
• Configuration management
• Build and test automation
• Self-testing
• Frequent commits
• Build and test on commit
• Fast build / test cycles
• Test in production environment clone
• Easy to get latest build artifacts
• Easy to get latest status
• Automated deployment

6. CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION ELEMENTS (2)
• Additionally, from our own experience:
• Integration into issues tracker system
• Easy / safe / cheap branching…
…and integrate / merge / resolve cycle
• Low burden for developers:
• Integration into IDE’s and other common tools
• Visualization
• “Culturally appropriate”

7. OUR JAVA TEAM WORKFLOW
• We “eat our own dog food”…
…but we also “eat our customers’ dog food”
• Heavy emphasis on continuous integration
• (Very) test-driven development process
• Jobs-driven process
• Branch-centric process:
• Dev / shared (team) / main / release
• Two modes:
• Eclipse-centric development and dev testing
• Hudson-centric automation for shared branches
• Open Source / off-the-shelf solutions:
• Eclipse, Mylin, Junit, Maven, Ant, Hudson, Cruise
control

8. KEY ELEMENTS IN OUR CI WORKFLOW
• Eclipse + P4Eclipse
• P4Eclipse + MergeQuest + Mylin + more…
• Hudson + Perforce plugin
• Maven + P4Maven
• Ant + P4Ant
• P4Java
• (P4D)

9. ECLIPSE – THE DEVELOPER'S COMMAND CENTER

10. ECLIPSE + P4ECLIPSE
• All code work done in Eclipse
• P4Eclipse supplies the Perforce functionality:
• Import as project
• Add / edit / delete files
• Submit / changelist management
• Refactoring
• P4Grep, diffs, resolves, branches, merges
• All dev testing done using Junit:
• Suite-based
• Right-click from Eclipse
• Mylin – the task master
• MergeQuest, branch graph, timelapse…
• Mavenized development where needed

11. HUDSON + PERFORCE
• Hudson + P4 extensions central to Perforce Java
team workflow:
• Used to setup builds and tests
• Used to store results and raw report data back to SCM
• Triggered on successful merges and codeline changes
• Uses existing third-party Open Source plugin
• Perforce will help develop and maintain
• Currently p4 command line based
• Typically configured through Hudson control panel
• Works with Jenkins, too, of course…

12. MAVEN + P4MAVEN
• Maven used extensively:
• Distribute shared team builds
• Cache external dependencies
• Off-the-shelf build lifecycle support
• Tie-ins to Eclipse
• Often run from Hudson
• P4Maven:
• Perforce-developed and supported
• P4Java-based
• Released 11.1
• Full Maven “scm” functionality
• MOJO-based extensions for jobs, etc.
• Non-core plugin

13. ANT + P4ANT
• P4Java-based
• P4Ant targets:
• The usual suspects, plus…
• …things like shelve / unshelve, fix, job-related tasks,
etc.
• Perforce usage:
• Test setups
• Builds
• Distributions
• Example:
<taskdef resource="com/perforce/ant/tasks/P4Tasks.properties" />
…
<target name="p4tasktest" description="Perforce task test">
<p4jsubmit port="eng-p4java-vm:20101" user="p4jtestuser"
passwd="p4jtestuser" client="p4TestUserWS" changelist="3391" />
</target>

14. P4JAVA
• Makes all-Java implementations possible
• Native protocol implementation
• Clear object model
• Underpins:
• Nearly all our Java-related CI platform
• Perforce Web Services Platform (P4WSP)

15. LOOKING BACK…
• Tools integration (“it’s the tools, stupid!”):
• P4Eclipse + Mylin
• P4Maven, P4Ant, Hudson Plugin
• Visualization:
• MergeQuest, P4Eclipse, Timelapse, Branch Graph
• Hudson + P4Hudson
• Immediacy:
• P4Eclipse, Hudson
• Flexibility:
• …all that and more.

16. SUMMARY
• The Perforce Java product line now forms a platform
• Key components:
• P4Eclipse
• P4Maven
• P4Ant
• P4Hudson
• (P4D, P4Java)
• It makes agile continuous integration so easy…
…that even the Perforce Java team can do it.