A Java geek

More DevOps for Spring Boot

I think Spring Boot brings something new to the table, especially concerning DevOps - and I’ve already written a post about it. However, there’s more than metrics and healthchecks. In one of another of my previous post, I described how to provide versioning information for Maven-built applications. This article will describe how this later post is not necessary when using Spring Boot.

Java

Fully automated Android build pipeline

In the course of my current job, I had to automate jobs for building Android applications. This post aims at describing the pain points I encountered in order for you readers not to waste your time if you intend to do so. The environment is the following: Puppet to automate the infrastructureJenkins for the CI serverThe Android projectA Gradle build file to build itRobolectric as the main testing framework Puppet and Jenkins My starting point was quite sound, indeed.

Java

Improve your tests with Mockito's capture

Unit Testing mandates to test the unit in isolation. In order to achieve that, the general consensus is to design our classes in a decoupled way using DI. In this paradigm, whether using a framework or not, whether using compile-time or runtime compilation, object instantiation is the responsibility of dedicated factories. In particular, this means the new keyword should be used only in those factories. Sometimes, however, having a dedicated factory just doesn’t fit.

Event

Spring 2015 European conferences tour

I’ve just finished my Spring 2015 European conferences tour. I’ve talked about Integration Testing, Mutation Testing and Spring Boot for Devops at Spring IO (Spain), GeeCon, DevIT and JEEConf. This is a resume of the sessions I attended and liked. Sessions I was not part of, I lost time in are or I slept in are not mentioned.

Development

Quality Tools: humble servants or tyrants?

I’ve always been an ardent proponent of internal quality in software, because in my various experiences, I’ve had more than my share of crappy codebases to maintain. I believe that quality tools can increase the internal quality of the code, thus decreasing maintenance costs in the long run. However, I don’t think that such tools are the only way to achieve that - I’m also a firm believer in code reviews.

Java

Connection is a leaky abstraction

As junior Java developers, we learn very early in our career about the JDBC API. We learn it’s a very important abstraction because it allows to change the underlying database in a transparent manner.

Development

Polyglot everywhere - part 2

Last week, we set up a new project using the YAML flavor of Polyglot Maven. Now is time for some server-side code! As a long time Vaadin advocate, let’s create a very simple Vaadin application. This will have the added advantage to let us hack something on the client-side as well for the last part of this series. As we are fully polyglot, we will avoid the old Java language and use something very cool instead.

Development

Polyglot everywhere - part 1

This is the era of polyglot! Proponents of this practice spread the word that you’ve to choose the language best adapted to the problem at hand. And with a single team dedicated to a microservice, this might make sense.

Java

What's the version of my deployed application?

In my career, I’ve noticed many small and un-expensive features that didn’t find their way into the Sprint backlog because they didn’t provide business value. However, they provided plenty of Return Over Investment during the life of the application, but that was completely overlooked due to short-sighted objectives (set by short-sighted management). Those include, but are not limited to: Monitoring in general, and more specifically metrics, health checks, etc.

Nicolas Fränkel's blog