Now that we're past 1.3.2, and we have some time before 1.3.3, I wanted to test out a few features that will make it easier to check what Buildr is doing. I rolled out these three changes to trunk/head, I want to know if they make your life better, just plan annoying, and any ideas for making them even better.
== Stack trace This is a feature we inherited from Rake which I really like. Most often builds fail because of mistakes in the buildfile, or just pointing to the buildfile helps you figure out why it failed (e.g. which set of tests ran last). The default error message only shows one line of the stack trace, pointing to the buildfile, so it doesn't crowd the console with too much useless information. If you need the full stack trace you can run buildr --trace. I'm toying around with making this a bit better, the latest change will show any number of lines (usually just one) from the buildfile. If you want to help find the right balance between two much information and not enough, have a look at the standard_exception_handling method in lib/buildr/core/application.rb == Colors for errors I think it's a good idea to use a splash of color for salient information. So I started by making error messages show up in red, that way they're noticeable when you run Buildr from the console (warnings are now blue). Any ideas on how to use colors more effectively? Colors would work on Linux, OS X, BSD and most other platforms where Buildr can guess ANSI colors support. On Windows you'll need to gem install win32console before you'll see colors. At least I think that's how it works. == Growl For those of you running on OS X and have Growl installed (which I'm told is practically everyone running on OS X), I added Growl notifications for completed and failed builds. You can turn them on/off from the Growl notification pane. I heard that Growl is coming to Windows and there's an alpha out. For those who don't know what Growl is, it pops up notifications on the screen in a noticeable but non-obtrusive way. So you can run the build from one window, switch to do something else, and you'll see the notification pop up when Buildr finishes. More information: http://growl.info/ Assaf
