ABAP Continuous Integration with Eclipse

[former_member183045]

Short read

As an add-on for ABAP in Eclipse the plugin ABAP Continuous Integration contains some features for a Continuous Integration environment. The plugin can be downloaded from the Eclipse Marketplace.

After installing the plugin there is only one configuration setting to be done in the Eclipse preferences (section ABAP CI) to get the plugin up and running:

In the first textbox (ABAP Development Project) the display name of your ABAP development system has to be inserted. The display name can be found in the Eclipse Package Explorer and has the form <system>_<client>_<user>_<language>, e.g. A4H_001_developer_en.

After completing these steps each time when you modify a development object all ABAP packages added to the new view "ABAP Continous Integration" are automatically executed. Thus you get immediate feedback whether your last code changes are correct or not.

Long read

With the integration of ABAP into Eclipse a state of the art development environment is available for developing in ABAP. One thing I am still missing is a tooling for a Continous Integration (CI) environment.

Unit tests can be performed with one additional button click. But taking into consideration that one of the main characteristics of a CI system should be full automation this is often one click too much.

Do you really continuously check if all your unit tests are still green?

A daily check of all ABAP unittests can be done for example with Jenkins. But often its really valuable to get an immediate feedback when a code change is breaking a core functionality of the system.

Therefore I started to create an Eclipse plugin which beside some other features runs automatically all ABAP unit tests each time one development object is changed.

The installation of the plugin is quite straightforward. In Eclipse->Help->Eclipse Marketplace you can find the plugin under ABAP Continuous Integration - well actually a Beta-Version, so feel free to comment bugs or ideas.

If you want to see some more details, the actual source code is available on github: abapCI.



 

After installing the plugin there is only one configuration setting to be done in the Eclipse preferences (section ABAP CI) to get the plugin up and running:

In the first textbox (ABAP Development Project) the display of your ABAP Development system has to be inserted. The display name can be found in the Eclipse Package Explorer and has the form <system>_<client>_<user>_<language>, e.g. A4H_001_developer_en.

The other configuration parameters which can be set actually in the Eclipse preferences page are not mandatory for the core functionality. The check box "Run ABAP Unit tests when file saved" is recommended as this activates the core functionality of the plugin.

After the successful installation of the plugin an additional icon in the menu bar can be found. Clicking this icon an additional view - ABAP Continuous Integration - is opened.

On the first start the view of the plugin will be empty. By clicking into the empty area of the view with the right mouse button a context menu is opened with four options.The third menu entry is "Add new package" which can be used to add ABAP packages to a test run performed after each change of a development object.

The actual state of the unit tests of each package is shown in the column Unit test.

A failed test is indicated with NOK in the column Unit test and optionally with a change of the Eclipse color theme.



There are already some other features realised, in beta mode:

• Remote build execution for Jenkins jobs


• Change of the color theme when a test run is broken


• Cyclic test runs also in case no development objects are changed


• ...

But for the beginning I leave you with the core functionality - hoping that you get some benefit out of it.