By default, grails uses ~/.grails as the working directory. If you’re doing branchy development, you can run into problems with this if you’ve got plugins installed in one branch that aren’t in the other. Having a unique directory per branch prevents you from having to run grails clean all the time.

Here’s a quick shell script that changes the grails working directory to have the branch name as a suffix if your source is contained in a mercurial repository (ex: the default branch would be ~/.grails_default and the 1.0 branch would be ~/.grails_1.0). If your application is not in a repo, it just uses the regular ~/.grails directory.

#!/bin/sh
HG_BRANCH=`hg branch 2>/dev/null`
GRAILS_SCRIPT=$GRAILS_HOME/bin/grails
 
if [ $HG_BRANCH ]; then
	GRAILS_WORK_DIR=`echo ~`/.grails_$HG_BRANCH
	echo "** grails working directory: $GRAILS_WORK_DIR"
	$GRAILS_SCRIPT -Dgrails.work.dir=$GRAILS_WORK_DIR $@
else
	echo "** default grails working directory"
	$GRAILS_SCRIPT $@
fi

Just save this script as “grails” and put it in your PATH before the $GRAILS_HOME/bin directory (also make sure that you’ve defined $GRAILS_HOME). I have a ~/bin directory that’s the first thing in my PATH.

If you use the grails-debug command, you can repeat these steps for that, just change GRAILS_SCRIPT to $GRAILS_HOME/bin/grails-debug.

This same technique could easily be modified to be used for other source control systems such as git or subversion.

The turnout at the meeting was great, and a heated discussion followed the presentation (as it always does at that meeting).

I’ve checked the original keynote files along with a PDF version into a mercurial repository.

Here’s the presentation on SlideShare:

I’ve made some enhancements to them in the interim that have made them even easier to use.

The most important alias is gtaf, which is short for “grails test-app” for failed tests.

It will search through your test output directory and look for any tests that failed. If it finds any, it will rerun only those tests. Otherwise, it will rerun all tests. That makes it easy to just use gtaf all the time. If any tests fail, it will open them up using Console.app.

If you’re not on OSX, or would like to use something else to view the failed test logs, just modify the testlog alias to do something different.

There are alternative versions of it to only run failed integration tests (gtaif – Grails Test App Integration Failed), failed unit tests (gtauf – Grails Test App Unit Failed) or attach a debugger to the tests as they run (gtadf – Grails Test App Debug Failed).

These aliases, plus most of the rest of my zsh setup, is available on bitbucket. If you haven’t used zsh before and are still using bash, I suggest switching over for the numerous benefits that it gives you.

Here’s the section of zshrc_general that has the grails testing aliases, just add this to your .zshrc/.bashrc and make sure to uncomment the appropriate GRAILS_TEST_LOG_DIRECTORY export if you’re not running grails 1.2 yet:

# grails > 1.2
export GRAILS_TEST_LOG_DIRECTORY=target/test-reports
 
# grails < 1.2
# export GRAILS_TEST_LOG_DIRECTORY=test/reports
 
# after grails-test if there were ERROR messages, you can open those logs with the Console.app using this
alias testlog='for F in `grep -lE "FAILED|Caused\ an\ ERROR" $GRAILS_TEST_LOG_DIRECTORY/plain/*.txt`; do echo ">>> opening" $F; open -a Console $F; done;'
 
# grails-debug-suspend doesn't exist by default, it's a copy of grails-debug with the suspend flag changed to "y" so that
# we can attach a remote debugger before it proceeds past startup
 
# aliases where you can optionally pass in a set of tests to run (or no argument to run all tests in that group)
alias gta=grailsTestApp
alias gtad=grailsTestAppDebug
alias gtau=grailsTestAppUnit
alias gtaud=grailsTestAppUnitDebug
alias gtai=grailsTestAppIntegration
alias gtaid=grailsTestAppIntegrationDebug
 
# aliases that will rerun any failed tests (or all tests if there aren't any failed tests)
alias gtaf=grailsTestAppFailed
alias gtadf=grailsTestAppDebugFailed
alias gtauf=grailsTestAppUnitFailed
alias gtaudf=grailsTestAppUnitDebugFailed
alias gtaif=grailsTestAppIntegrationFailed
alias gtaidf=grailsTestAppIntegrationDebugFailed
 
 
function grailsTestApp() { grailsTest grails "" $1 }
function grailsTestAppFailed() { grailsFailedTests grails "" }
 
function grailsTestAppDebug() { grailsTest grails-debug-suspend "" $1 }
function grailsTestAppDebugFailed() { grailsFailedTests grails-debug-suspend "" }
 
function grailsTestAppUnit() { grailsTest grails -unit $1 }
function grailsTestAppUnitFailed() { grailsFailedTests grails -unit }
 
function grailsTestAppUnitDebug() { grailsTest grails-debug-suspend -unit $1 }
function grailsTestAppUnitDebugFailed() { grailsFailedTests grails-debug-suspend -unit }
 
function grailsTestAppIntegration() { grailsTest grails -integration $1 }
function grailsTestAppIntegrationFailed() { grailsFailedTests grails -integration }
 
function grailsTestAppIntegrationDebug() { grailsTest grails-debug-suspend -integration $1 }
function grailsTestAppIntegrationDebugFailed() { grailsFailedTests grails-debug-suspend -integration }
 
function grailsFailedTests() {
	FAILED_TESTS=''
	for F in `grep -lE "FAILED|Caused\ an\ ERROR" $GRAILS_TEST_LOG_DIRECTORY/plain/*.txt`; do
		FAILED_TESTS="$FAILED_TESTS `echo $F | sed -E 's/.*TEST-(.*)Tests.txt/\1/g'`"
	done;
	echo "failed tests: $FAILED_TESTS"
	grailsTest $1 $2 $FAILED_TESTS
}
 
function grailsTest() {
	echo "Running: $1 test-app $2 $3 || testlog "
    time $1 test-app $2 $3 || testlog
}

I believe that they’ll also work fine as-is in bash, though I haven’t tested them.

Combining the unix “watch” command with the mysql “show processlist” command gives me what I’m looking for. A quick, self-updating status of the current state of the database.

watch -n 5 --differences "mysql -u username -psekrit -e 'show processlist'"

Shows something like this:

Every 5.0s: mysql -n 5 -u username -psekrit -e 'show processlist'                                   Thu Jun 18 05:25:14 2009
 
Id      User    Host       db      Command Time    State         Info
3141    admin   localhost  mydb    Query   34978   freeing items SELECT id, type, active, email FROM user WHERE email
3146    admin   localhost  mydb    Sleep   0                     NULL       
24876   root    localhost  NULL    Query   0       NULL          show processlist

Where the “time” column is the number of seconds the query has been running, and Info holds the actual query (you can use “show full processlist” to see the full query).

Watch is a nice little linux util that runs a command every “n” seconds (it defaults to 2 seconds). If you use the –differences switch, it will highlight the differences between one update and another. I use watch for all kinds of monitoring activities, such as watching a directory to see a file grow in size as it gets transfered.

Here’s a quick shell function that you can add to your .bashrc/.bash_profile/.zshrc to use on arbitrary hosts:

function mysqltop() {
    MYSQL_OPTS=$@
    watch -n 5 --differences "mysql $MYSQL_OPTS -e 'show processlist'"
}

Then just pass in any creds/host info you need like a normal mysql command:

mysqltop -u ted -psekrit1 -h example.com -P 3307

If you’re on linux, you probably already have “watch” installed. If you’re on OSX, you probably don’t, but you can get it quickly through macports. Install macports, make sure “port” is in your path and run:

sudo port install watch

There is also a command called mytop that you can get which looks like the same thing, but prints out the processlist details with some nicer formatting and a little extra information. It’s in macports, but it has a number of dependencies including mysql so if you didn’t install mysql through macports, you might want to stick with what I have above or get it another way.

(EDIT: updated with bash function)

The build-test-data plugin makes creating integration test data easy. It decorates your domain objects with a “build” method that will create new domain instances and will automatically populate required fields with data and save it to the database. This enables you to create more maintainable tests where the data you create is targeted specifically at the situations you’re trying to test, without having to go through all of the ceremony of creating the rest of the object graph that you don’t care about.

// creates a new Book instance with all required fields 
// (like the Author that the book belongsTo) populated
def b = Book.build()

To learn more about the basics of the build-test-data plugin, see this blog post and check out the Basic Usage and Sample Code wiki pages.

To install, just run the install-plugin grails command (this will also upgrade an existing plugin):

grails install-plugin build-test-data

The 0.2 version of the plugin includes a number of enhancements and bugfixes. Major highlights include:

• JodaTime support (along with any other persistable class with a zero argument constructor)
• much easier and more powerful config files (see the TestDataConfig wiki page for details and examples)

Additionally, the code has been cleaned up and refactored to be easier to understand.

See the Release Notes wiki page for full details.

I’d be interested to hear any further feedback on this plugin and other features that people might find useful. I’ve successfully been using it on my current project and it’s been a big help in keeping my tests clean and free from superfluous object construction code, as well as flexible in that it automatically adapts to a changing domain model.

The aliases are primarily just the first letter of the words in the command, which makes them easy to remember (and saves on typing). Some examples:

gta                   # grails test-app
gtai                  # grails test-app -integration
gtaud AuthorService   # grails-debug-suspend test-app -unit AuthorService

My testing aliases are probably my most often used grails aliases. They’re all “gta” (for grails test-app) followed by an optional “u” or “i” (to run only unit or integration).

There’s also an alternate for each of those commands with a “d” on the end for “debug”. I call a script named “grails-debug-suspend” which is simply a copy of the normal “grails-debug” command, but with the “suspend” flag set to “y”. This causes the application to stop right away till you attach a remote debugger. This is very useful for quick tests as its often the case that the code gets past where you have breakpoints set before you launch the debugger.

These commands all also let you pass in the name of a specific test class so that only that test runs.

The overall format for all of the aliases is:

gta[i|u][d] [TestClassName]

This example suspends until a debugger is attached and then runs the AuthorServiceTests.groovy unit test class:

gtaud AuthorService

These aliases are all set up to run the “testlog” alias if a failing exit code is returned from the test run. This searches through all of the testlog results for any failures and automatically opens up each failing testlog in the OSX Console.app (if you’re on another platform, just substitute a different editor). I wrote a more detailed post a while ago about how nice Console.app is for looking at grails test logs.

Lastly, each command is also run with the unix “time” command, which I find useful to help me see how long my tests are taking and get a feel over time for the overall performance of the system under test.

# grails-debug-suspend doesn't exist by default, it's a copy of grails-debug with the suspend flag changed to "y" so that
# we can attach a remote debugger before it proceeds past startup
 
alias gta=grailsTestApp
function grailsTestApp() { grailsTest grails "" $1 }
 
alias gtad=grailsTestAppDebug
function grailsTestAppDebug() { grailsTest grails-debug-suspend "" $1 }
 
alias gtau=grailsTestAppUnit
function grailsTestAppUnit() { grailsTest grails -unit $1 }
 
alias gtaud=grailsTestAppUnitDebug
function grailsTestAppUnitDebug() { grailsTest grails-debug-suspend -unit $1 }
 
alias gtai=grailsTestAppIntegration
function grailsTestAppIntegration() { grailsTest grails -integration $1 }
 
alias gtaid=grailsTestAppIntegrationDebug
function grailsTestAppIntegrationDebug() { grailsTest grails-debug-suspend -integration $1 }
 
function grailsTest() {
	echo "Running: $1 test-app $2 $3 || testlog "
    time $1 test-app $2 $3 || testlog
}
 
# after grails test if there were ERROR messages, you can open those logs with the Console.app using this
alias testlog='for F in `grep -lE "FAILED|Caused\ an\ ERROR" test/reports/plain/*.txt`; do echo ">>> opening" $F; open -a Console $F; done;'

You can place these aliases in your .bashrc/.bash_profile in your home directory (you can also use them with cygwin on windows.

Alternatively, if you’re using zsh (or interested in switching from bash), I’ve got all of my zsh setup shared in a source control repo in a format that’s easy to use and extend for yourself.

This is the modified grails-debug command called grails-debug-suspend, just put it somewhere in your PATH and make it executable (chmod +x grails-debug-suspend):

#!/bin/bash
 
DIRNAME=$GRAILS_HOME/bin
. "$DIRNAME/startGrails"
 
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Xdebug -Xnoagent -Dgrails.full.stacktrace=true -Djava.compiler=NONE -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=y,address=5005"
startGrails org.codehaus.groovy.grails.cli.GrailsScriptRunner "$@"

I found it painful to manually eject each individual drive in the finder so I threw together this quick AppleScript to eject all the disks.

tell application "Finder"
	eject (every disk)
end tell

Just open up /Applications/AppleScript/ScriptEditor.app and paste that in. Then choose “Save As” and pick “Application”. That will compile the script and create a .app file that you can click on to run, or you can put it in your path and execute it there.

I think the same kind of script could be created with the command line “diskutil eject” command, but this seemed cleaner as I wasn’t able to come up with a generic way to figure out which disks were “ejectable” and which weren’t. AppleScript is able to figure that all out for you.

I’ve created a new bitbucket repository to hold my shared zshrc configuration. You can get it for yourself by cloning the repository:

cd ~
hg clone http://bitbucket.org/tednaleid/shared-zshrc/

If you don’t have mercurial installed, you can just grab the compressed archive of your choice from the downloads page.

I’d suggest cloning/unzipping into your home directory, but you can put it wherever you want.

There’s an install.sh script in there that will create a new ~/.zshrc file. If you have an existing .zshrc file, just move it out of the way and run the install script (it won’t let you whack an existing file).

./install.sh

That created .zshrc file will load up all of my shared settings and aliases from wherever you have the shared-zshrc directory. It also will look for a host specific file where any sensitive info, or host dependent info can be added. I normally put things like my change directory and ssh aliases in here.

I probably created around half of these files myself, but I couldn’t tell you for the life of me where the majority of the other half came from. This file has accreted over the years like barnacles on a ship.

Some of these commands originally started out in either a tcsh file (or was it ksh?), I eventually moved to bash, and then a couple of years ago, a coworker showed me the wonders of zsh and I haven’t looked back.

If you’re still using bash, give zsh a try. Changing your shell is as easy as running this command:

chsh -s /bin/zsh

ZSH Specific Stuff

Most of the zsh shell configuration magic is in zshrc_compinstall. Some features include:

• shared history across shells
• command spelling correction
• vastly improved tab completion of commands (including keyboard navigation of potential matches)
• file globbing that makes finding files easy (try ls **/*.txt to recursively search for all txt files, much easier than find . -name "*.txt"
• automatically using pushd for cd commands, use “dh” to see a history of your directories, use cd -N to go back N directories in your history (ex: cd -3)

Useful Aliases

Some of the most useful aliases in zshrc_general include:

Grep through Aliases (ag)

I often forget what some of my less often used aliases are, but I know what commands they use. I’ve set up “ag” (alias grep) to help me search through my aliases and find the right one:

% ag python
webshare='python -m SimpleHTTPServer'

Grepping History (gh)

Great for finding commands in your history that you can only remember part of.

  gh grails
  ...
  582  grails create-app testDates
  584  grails create-domain-class Foo
  585  grails generate-all Foo
  587  cd grails-app
  591  grails generate-views Foo
  592  grails run-app

Global Alias – GV – to “grep -v”

Grep is great for finding things, but often you find too much and need to slice stuff out. If you use “grep -v” that finds all lines that don’t match a pattern. The global alias “GV” that makes this even easier.

   grep -ri foo

If that finds too much stuff (say catalina log files and svn files that you don’t care about), just slice them out with GV:

   grep -ri foo GV svn GV catalina

That will remove any lines that have “svn” or “catalina” anywhere in them (including the file name).

I think that rc files tend to be very personal things, what works for me likely won’t work for you exactly as it is. But I also love to look at other people’s rc files to grab the things that look interesting. Feel free to poke through mine and grab whatever strikes your fancy.

There’s a ton of other stuff in there that I use every day, including sections specific to version control (svn and hg) as well as groovy/grails shortcuts. Feel free to poke around and ask me any questions about what something does.

This is what I was seeing:

% curl -k https://www.google.com
curl: (1) Protocol https not supported or disabled in libcurl

After a bunch of fiddling around looking at the Portfile (located at /opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/net/curl/Portfile), I saw that there was something called a variant that seemed to talk about ssl support.

I’d never needed to install a variant of a port before, but it’s actually pretty easy to do. Just add a “+” with the variant name at the end of the install command.

sudo port install curl +ssl

After that, curl did exactly what I was expecting it to:

% curl -k https://www.google.com
<HTML><HEAD><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">
<TITLE>302 Moved</TITLE></HEAD><BODY>
<H1>302 Moved</H1>
The document has moved
<A HREF="http://www.google.com">here</A>.
</BODY></HTML>

So if you’ve already got curl installed with macports, you’ll probably want to uninstall it, then clean to be sure, then reinstall with the variant name:

sudo port uninstall curl
sudo port clean curl
sudo port install curl +ssl

From the documentation, it appears that it also works for the upgrade command as well, so I believe you could force an upgrade and get it to install the curl ssl variant with:

sudo port -f upgrade curl +ssl

I haven’t tested this though, so I can’t say with 100% certainty that it will work.

UPDATE: Brian Michelich tried this and ran into some issues because he had git-core installed through macports. Git-core relies on curl so forcing an upgrade could potentially bork anything that relies on curl. The safest thing is likely to uninstall curl as macports will let you know if anything relies on it before you remove it.

If you want to check if you have any dependencies, you can use the “dependents” command:

port dependents curl

I hope this helps someone (possibly me, in 6 months when I’m setting up my next computer :).

function switchGrails() {
    echo "Switching to groovy version: $1"
    echo "Switching to grails version: $2"
    sudo rm /usr/local/{groovy,grails}
 
    sudo ln -s /usr/local/$1 /usr/local/groovy
    sudo ln -s /usr/local/$2 /usr/local/grails
    echo "Done!"
    ls -latr /usr/local/{groovy,grails}
}
 
alias g104='switchGrails "groovy-1.5.7" "grails-1.0.4"'
alias g11rc2='switchGrails "groovy-1.6.0" "grails-1.1-RC2"'

You can create your own aliases like the ones above to switch to the groovy/grails combinations that you happen to be working with.

Just stick the code above in your .profile/.bashrc/.zshrc file and restart your shell to make the aliases available.

This function assumes that you’ve got you’ve got groovy and grails installed in your /usr/local directory and that you use a symlink at /usr/local/groovy that $GROOVY_HOME is pointed to and /usr/local/grails that $GRAILS_HOME is pointed to. If those assumptions aren’t correct for you, you’ll have to tweak the script.

It also uses “sudo” as it assumes that /usr/local is owned by root and not by your logged in user. If you’ve chowned the directory to yourself, you can remove the sudo (and the need to enter your password).

Now it’s easy for me to switch between different projects by just typing the appropriate alias:

pollux% g104
Switching to groovy version: groovy-1.5.7
Switching to grails version: grails-1.0.4
Done!
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  23 Mar  8 19:55 /usr/local/groovy -> /usr/local/groovy-1.5.7
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  23 Mar  8 19:55 /usr/local/grails -> /usr/local/grails-1.0.4
 
 
pollux% g11rc2 
Switching to groovy version: groovy-1.6.0
Switching to grails version: grails-1.1-RC2
Done!
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  23 Mar  8 19:56 /usr/local/groovy -> /usr/local/groovy-1.6.0
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  25 Mar  8 19:56 /usr/local/grails -> /usr/local/grails-1.1-RC2