Question

I am trying to implement a gradle task to dynamically create a buildsignature.properties file from a series of environment variable values and shell executions. I have it mostly working, but I can’t seem to get the output of the shell commands. Here’s my task…

task generateBuildSignature << {
    ext.whoami = exec() {
        executable = "whoami"
    }
    ext.hostname = exec() {
         executable = "hostname"
    }
    ext.buildTag = System.env.BUILD_TAG ?: "dev"

    ant.propertyfile(
        file: "${buildDir}/buildsignature.properties",
        comment: "This file is automatically generated - DO NOT EDIT!" ) {
        entry( key: "version", value: "${project.version}" )
        entry( key: "buildTimestamp", value: "${new Date().format('yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss z')}" )
        entry( key: "buildUser", value: "${ext.whoami}" )
        entry( key: "buildSystem", value: "${ext.hostname}" )
        entry( key: "buildTag", value: "$ext.buildTag" )
    }
}

But the resulting properties field does not get the desired results for buildUser and buildSystem.

#This file is automatically generated - DO NOT EDIT!
#Mon, 18 Jun 2012 18:14:14 -0700
version=1.1.0
buildTimestamp=2012-06-18 18\:14\:14 PDT
buildUser=org.gradle.process.internal.DefaultExecHandle$ExecResultImpl@2e6a54f9
buildSystem=org.gradle.process.internal.DefaultExecHandle$ExecResultImpl@46f0bf3d
buildTag=dev

How do I get buildUser and buildSystem to match the output of the corresponding exec rather than some default ExecResultImpl toString? This really can’t be that hard, can it?

Answer 1

This post describes how to parse the output from an Exec invocation. Below you’ll find two tasks that run your commands.

task setWhoamiProperty {
    doLast {
        new ByteArrayOutputStream().withStream { os ->
            def result = exec {
                executable = 'whoami'
                standardOutput = os
            }
            ext.whoami = os.toString()
        }
    }
}

task setHostnameProperty {
    doLast {
        new ByteArrayOutputStream().withStream { os ->
            def result = exec {
                executable = 'hostname'
                standardOutput = os
            }
            ext.hostname = os.toString()
        }
    }
}

task printBuildInfo {
    dependsOn setWhoamiProperty, setHostnameProperty
    doLast {
         println whoami
         println hostname
    }
}

There’s actually an easier way to get this information without having to invoke a shell command.

Currently logged in user: System.getProperty('user.name')

Hostname: InetAddress.getLocalHost().getHostName()