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Continuous integration with InstaCoverage

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FulekiDani edited this page Mar 17, 2020 · 1 revision

Continuous Integration with InstaCoverage (draft)

Continuous integration (CI) is a wide-spread automation approach for efficient SW engineering. In this document we focus on unit testing, an important task in the SW development process, and explain how to integrate Jenkins (a mainstream CI server), InstaCoverage (a new unit testing tool for LabVIEW) and Github (a mainstream source-code management system).

1. InstaCoverage introduction

InstaCoverage is a flexible unit testing tools for the LabVIEW programming language. InstaCoverage is the only tool available for LabVIEW NXG, the next generation of the LabVIEW environment. For the current generation of LabVIEW, InstaCoverage is the only tool that supports code coverage measurement and can be fast on big projects at the same time.

2. Jenkins introduction

Jenkins is a self-contained, open-source automation server which can be used to automate all sorts of tasks related to building, testing, and delivering or deploying software.

Jenkins can be installed through native system packages, Docker, or even run standalone by any machine with a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed. In this document we are focusing the standalone solution in Windows, for other solutions visit this website.

3. Getting Started

3.1. The LabVIEW projects

Clone this repository.

This repository contains two LabVIEW projects. One of them is instacoverage-ci-demo.lvproj which represents the project under unit test. The unit tests are already included in the project. The other project is Unit test runner.lvproj which contains auxiliary VIs to execute unit tests via Jenkins.

Note: you can reuse the latter project by copying the Unit Test runner folder next your project.

3.2. The Jenkins file

Another asset you’ll need is a Jenkinsfile, which is located in the root of the example project.

Note: you can reuse this file as well by making the following changes to it: set the PROJECT_UNDER_TEST parameter’s default value to the path of your *.lvproj file (if it is in some subfolder you should use double backslash, e.g. "some\\folder\\projectName.lvproj"). Another parameter you may need to change is LV2018_PATH with the path to your LabVIEW installation.

3.3. Jenkins installation and configuration

3.3.1. Jenkins installation and start up

Install Java runtime (if not already installed)

Important
 Jenkins requires Java Runtime Environment (JRI). We used version 8u221 for our setup. Don’t forget to add the java.exe command to your environment variables (e.g., C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.8.0_221\bin).

Install Jenkins

Download Jenkins here and install.

Important
 The default folder for the installation is C:\Program Files (x86)\Jenkins, but we recommend not to use that because the C:\Program Files (x86) folder uses stricter rights for writing files, which can free you from a lot of headache.

Define a new environment variable JENKINS_HOME for the Jenkins installation folder as it is shown in the following example.

environmentVariable

Start the Jenkins service

Note
 Jenkins normally starts using port 8080. However, if you have other services starting up you might find that this port is already taken.

In this document we will use port 9090:

  • Open a command prompt as Administrator

  • CD into your Jenkins folder (e.g. C:\Jenkins )

  • Start Jenkins with next command:

    java -jar jenkins.war --httpPort=9090

  • Load Jenkins from your browser at http://localhost:9090.

  • Set credentials.

Note
 You might not need new personal credentials. For preparing this tutorial we used the admin user.

Log in now and you should see something like this:

jenkinsWelcomePage

3.3.2. Install Jenkins plugins

In this example we use the following 4 plugins listed below.

  1. GitHub Integration Plugin

  2. GitHub Authentication plugin

  3. Pipeline: GitHub

You can install them via the main menu: Jenkins > Manage Jenkins > Manage Plugins. Restart Jenkins by stopping stopping and starting the above command again.

3.3.3. Credentials

If necessary, set your credentials so that Jenkins can talk to GitHub. In this tutorial we use a public GitHub repository and so no authentication is needed.

3.3.4. Connect Jenkins with GitHub project

At this point Jenkins is ready to get GitHub repository to build that and run tests.

  • Adding New Item

    • Select New Item

    • First step:

      • Enter name to the project (e.g., InstaCoverage CI example)

      • Select MultiBranch Pipeline

      • Click Ok.

    • Second step:

      • At Branch Sources select GitHub

      • At Repository HTTPS URL and GitHub repository clone link (we used this public URL in this tutorial)

        • You can hit Validate to see if the URL is fine

        • Credentials: none

      • Build Configuration

        • Mode: by Jenkinsfile

        • Script Path: path of the Jenkins file relative to the root of the repository, in our case: LabVIEW projects/Continuous Integration with InstaCoverage example/Jenkinsfile

      • Hit Save

This will launch a longer process on a page called Scan Repository Log. Sit back and relax. After the process ends, expect a message like this: Finished: SUCCESS.

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