Saturday 29 March 2008

Getting an overview of all targets accumulated in a Phing build file

Looking for an equivalent to Ant's -p(rojecthelp) command-line option in Phing, I dug up that you can use Phing's -l(ist) option to get a quick overview of all targets hosted in a given build file. This comes in handy when you are maintaining build files or have to get a raw picture of the provided targets of a project specific build file. The following console output shows the targets hosted in a example build file. As you will see, by using the -l command-line option you get an overview of the default target, the main targets and further subtargets.

triton:work stolt$ phing -l
Buildfile: /Volumes/USB DISK/work/build.xml
Build file for recordshelf project
Default target:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
help Displays the help for this build file

Main targets:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
build Builds the project
clean Removes data left over by former build
cs-coding-standard Runs the coding standard code inspection
help Display the help for this build file
init Initializes the build process
layout Creates the project layout for the build
lint-project Lints all code artifacts
test-components Runs the automated component tests
test-integration Runs the automated integration tests
test-units Runs the automated unit tests

Subtargets:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
build-initial-model
A target becomes a main target when it has an non-empty description attribute, otherwise it will be a subtarget. This can be used to define the visibility and thereby 'callability' of targets, similar as you would do when defining access specifiers for class members of a PHP class. Main targets would become the public targets of your build file and all subtargets could be considered as private targets, which shouldn't be called directly as they might/should be used to provide specific helper functionality to public main targets or target wrappers. To definitively veto the call to a target, which never should be run directly via the Phing CLI(e.g. phing tragetname), just define an invalid target name(i.e. -build-initial-model instead of build-initial-model) so the Phing CLI will respond with an error and thereby not run the build file. The next console output shows the Phing CLI response when calling a private target.
triton:work stolt$ phing -build-initial-model
Unknown argument: -build-initial-model
phing [options] [target [target2 [target3] ...]]
Options:
-h -help print this message
-l -list list available targets in this project
-v -version print the version information and exit
-q -quiet be extra quiet
-verbose be extra verbose
-debug print debugging information
-logfile <file> use given file for log
-logger <classname> the class which is to perform logging
-f -buildfile <file> use given buildfile
-D<property>=<value> use value for given property
-find <file> search for buildfile towards the root of the
filesystem and use it
-inputhandler <file> the class to use to handle user input

Report bugs to <dev@phing.tigris.org>
This post is somehow a partial and PHP flavoured remix of a post by Julian Simpson, who runs the build doctor blog and is also the author of the 'Refactoring Ant Build Files' contribution to the upcoming ThoughtWorks Anthology book.

2 comments:

Julian said...

Raphael,

Thanks for the link back to Build Doctor. It's the second link back from a PHP site - it must be time to have a look at Phing :)

Best,

Julian.

Raphael Stolt said...

Hi Julian,

Thanks for stopping by. Recently read your essay about 'Refactoring Ant Build Files' and it turned out to be a really usefull and good one.

When looking at Phing you should feel at home right away because it's really close/similar to ANT.

Best regards,

Raphael