Pragmatic Project Automation: How to Build, Deploy, and Monitor Java Apps (Paperback)

by Mike Clark (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Forget wizards, you need a slave--someone to do your repetitive, tedious and boring tasks, without complaint and without pay, so you'll have more time to design and write exciting code. Indeed, that's what computers are for. You can enlist your own computer to automate all of your project's repetitive tasks, ranging from individual builds and running unit tests through to full product release, customer deployment, and monitoring the system.

Many teams try to do these tasks by hand. That's usually a really bad idea: people just aren't as good at repetitive tasks as machines. You run the risk of doing it differently the one time it matters, on one machine but not another, or doing it just plain wrong. But the computer can do these tasks for you the same way, time after time, without bothering you. You can transform these labor-intensive, boring and potentially risky chores into automatic, background processes that just work.

In this eagerly anticipated book, you'll find a variety of popular, open-source tools to help automate your project. With this book, you will learn:

How to make your build processes accurate, reliable, fast, and easy.

How to build complex systems at the touch of a button.

How to build, test, and release software automatically, with no human intervention.

Technologies and tools available for automation: which to use and when.

Tricks and tips from the masters (do you know how to have your cell phone tell you that your build just failed?)

You'll find easy-to-implement recipes to automate your Java project, using the same popular style as the rest of our Jolt Productivity Award-winning Starter Kit books. Armed with plenty of examples and concrete, pragmatic advice, you'll find it's easy to get started and reap the benefits of modern software development. You can begin to enjoy pragmatic, automatic, unattended software production that's reliable and accurate every time.

Other Pragmatic Programmer books:

Starter Kit Volume II: Pragmatic Unit Testing (Java and C# versions) (Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas)
Starter Kit Volume I: Pragmatic Version Control using CVS (Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt)

About the Author
Clark is a consultant, author, speaker, and programmer. He helps teams build better software faster through his company, Clarkware Consulting, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: The Pragmatic Programmers (August 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0974514039
• ISBN-13: 978-0974514031
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #225,418 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hire a Virtual Employee - buy this book!, August 2, 2004

By	David Bock "javaguy" (Hamilton, VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you are doing any serious software development, then you have tasks that need to be automated. Your build process, unit tests, deployment, measurements of quality, and other metrics for project management can all be automated once, and then created over and over again, basically 'for free'. This is what computer do, right? So why not let them do it for software development?

Mike Clark does an excellent job describing both the 'high-level why' of project automation, as well as real-world 'low level' examples. He describes project automation with shell scripts, tools like Ant and CruiseControl, automation of routine tasks in CVS, and create automated 'status reports' with things like log4j and RSS feeds of data from your build report.

The day after reading this book, I had modified our automated build to send an email to my cell phone if it failed - along with the names of everyone who had commited a change since the last successful build. While not every project needs this level of paranoia, this kind of 'project safety net' gives us great confidence in the quality of our code.

It's hard to say what could be improved about this book - its biggest strength and its biggest weakness are its size... at 150 pages, I feel like there could have been so much more said on the subject... on the other hand, the books size makes it very approachable - you can pick it up, read it, learn something, and use it that same day. If the book were any larger, it would run the risk of trying to say too much, not saying it as clearly, and dating itself much more quickly.

This book (actually all three of the prag prog 'starter kit' are on our team bookshelf, and are considered part of our project's documentation.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Make your computer do the work, August 7, 2004

By	Ernest Friedman-Hill "JavaRanch Sheriff" (Gaithersburg, MD United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This little book could double your productivity by showing you how to make computers actually help you do your job. Do you spend too much time chasing configuration bugs, following checklists, and performing repetitive tasks that take time away from your coding and design duties? Then "Pragmatic Project Automation" is for you.

This isn't the kind of "software process" book that tries to sell you on following a methodology. There's no preaching, and there are no outlandish claims of productivity increases. Instead of selling snake oil, Mike Clark just wants to explain, in a clear, effective way, how to use open-source tools to automate your builds, release process, and application monitoring. Java tools like Ant, CruiseControl, and JUnit are the centerpieces of this book, but shell scripts and batch files also make cameo appearances.

There's even a section on assembling novel monitoring devices. Admit it -- wouldn't it be cool to have red and green Lava Lamps that light up according to the status of your project build?

The beginning programmer might wonder what all the fuss is about, but anyone tasked with delivering software on a schedule will appreciate the many ways in which this book will help them.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Pragmatic Gem, August 18, 2004

By	David E. Rupp (Highlands Ranch, CO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Don't let its relatively small size (152 pages) fool you -- this book has more relevant content per page than I've seen in a technical book since, well, the last book I read from the Pragmatic Programmers ("Pragmatic Unit Testing", by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas). In fact, I believe this book's compactness to be one of its greatest features.

Mike Clark has done a masterful job of distilling the essence of the topic of automation and presenting it in a well-thought-out, easy-to-follow progression. He finds a natural starting point -- the build -- and takes us from a simple on-demand build using Ant, to scheduled builds using CruiseControl. At each step he shows us how we can safely relinquish control to an automated tool, buying time and increasing reliability.

Subsequent steps follow in natural progression -- from simple builds to automated, scheduled, and triggered builds. From building the software to assembling a release. Then on to deploying the release. And finally, monitoring the release once it's deployed.

Don't be fooled into thinking this book is just for server-side Java developers. That audience is certainly a main focus, and the book doesn't have room to be encyclopedic by any means. Even so, Mike does a great job of pointing out alternatives where they exist -- if there's a .NET equivalent of a tool, you'll find at least a mention of it, along with a URL where you can go to learn more. There are shell scripts of various flavors sprinkled throughout the book. There's even an example written in Ruby!

Mike has a gentle, relaxed writing style. He doesn't -- as too many other technical authors do these days -- try too hard to impress us with his knowledge; he just lays it out there. He doesn't bombard us with overly formal (or informal) language, hackneyed metaphors, or lame jokes.

If you believe that time is money, then it follows naturally that saving time is saving money. This book will help you do both. I give it my highest recommendation.