Hi,
We've just added our Ant build to CruiseControl and are working to make
it as usable as possible. One of our issues is the interpretation of
Ant log messages by CruiseControl. CruiseControl captures all log
messages issued by the Ant build and captures the messages' levels
(DEBUG, INFO, etc.). The CruiseControl reporting app uses these levels
to filter what gets displayed in different sections of the build
report. By default, all Ant WARN or ERROR messages are displayed in
CruiseControl's "Errors/Warnings" report. Naturally, we're now
interested in making sure our build's Ant log messages are logged with
an appropriate level. I think this is similar to other Ant users'
concerns - see the "Setting Project.MSG_ERR for compiler error messages"
message posted just today.
It seems like it's basically the individual task that's responsible for
figuring out the log level for a given message it issues. Some tasks
give the buildfile control over this - like <echo> - while others don't
- like <java>.
I'd like to propose that exec-like tasks like <exec> and <java>, which
already support <redirector> functionality for process output, extend
that functionality to allow <redirector>s that say exactly how Ant
should log the output from the exec'd process. In Ant 1.6.5 you can
specify a <redirector> that redirects stdout and stderr, independently,
to a property or to a file:
<exec executable="cat">
<redirector outputproperty="redirector.out"
error="outputs/redirector.err.txt"/>
</redirector>
</exec>
What if you could specify a <redirector> that redirects to Ant log
messages, but explicitly sets the log level:
<exec executable="cat">
<redirector outputproperty="redirector.out"
errorlog="true"
errorloglevel="INFO"/>
</redirector>
</exec>
The above redirector would send cat's stdout to the Ant property
"redirector.out", while sending cat's stderr to the Ant log as INFO
messages. Or what I think would be better syntax:
<exec executable="cat">
<redirector>
<output>
<property name="redirector.out"/>
</output>
<error>
<log level="INFO"/>
</error>
</redirector>
</exec>
I understand that logging a process's stdout as INFO messages and its
stderr as WARN messages is a good general rule. But different programs
use stdout and stderr in different ways. Some programs really do use
stderr to separate critical errors that the user must see, so that
stderr really should be a higher level than stdout. Other programs use
stderr to separate verbose information that may only be interesting to
the user while running the program and shouldn't be considered part of
the real output, so that stderr may actually be less important than
stdout. Therefore it makes more sense to treat stdout and stderr as
separate categories of messages rather than different levels, where one
is always more important than the other.
Does anyone else see this as a useful enhancement to Ant's <redirector>?
Thanks,
Jim
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