Automatic Build Programs - Part 2

In the last post, we discussed the program AutoBuild.bat, which downloads the latest revision of EDK2, builds the EDK2 environment, and if EDK2 does not build, AutoBuild.bat emails an error message to a specified address. This article will discuss how to set up AutoBuild.bat to run on a daily schedule.

To set up AutoBuild.bat, follow the instructions in Part 1.

Schtasks

To schedule AutoBuild.bat, you will need to call  SCHTASKS in the Command Prompt. To set up AutoBuild.bat's schedule correctly, use the following structure:

schtasks /create /sc daily /tn taskname /st HH:MM /tr "c:\sourcecode\AutoBuild SenderEmail SenderPassword RecieverEmail SMTPServer"

In the line above, taskname is the name assigned to the schedule. HH:MM is the time when AutoBuild.bat will run. Schtasks uses 24-hour time, so 11:00am should be written as 11:00 and 11:00pm should be written as 22:00. 

SenderEmail is the email address that the error message will be sent from. SenderPassword is the password for the sending email address. RecieverEmail is the email that will receive the error message. SMTPServer is the SMTP server address for the sending email address. These inputs are discussed further in Part 1.

If any of the arguments passed into the /tr section of schtasks have spaces, use the following structure when writing the /tr section:

/tr "\"c:\sourcecode\AutoBuild\" \"argument1 with spaces\" argument2"

The schedule frequency, or /sc, is currently set to daily. If you want to change the frequency, all other valid /sc inputs can be found here.

The following line shows an actual example of using schtasks:
schtasks /create /SC daily /TN BuildSchedule /ST 11:00 /TR "c:\sourcecode\AutoBuild2 sender@email.com MyPassword1 reciever@email.com smtp.email.com"

Checking Conditions

Now that AutoBuild.bat can build the latest revisions of EDK2 on a daily basis, we need to make sure that AutoBuild.bat only builds EDK2 if it finds a revision of EDK2 that it has not built before. To check if it has built a certain revision, AutoBuild.bat searches to see if RevNum.txt exists. RevNum.txt contains the revision number for the last revision to be built. If RevNum.txt does not exist, AutoBuild.bat has not built a revision before, so AutoBuild.bat immediately starts downloading and building the latest revision. If RevNum.txt does exist, it signifies that a previous revision has been built.

 AutoBuild.bat uses svn info in order to get the revision number of the latest revision of EDK2 uploaded to Subversion. 

AutoBuild.bat also uses RevNum.txt to get the revision number of the last EDK2 revision built by AutoBuild.bat. 

AutoBuild.bat then checks to see if the revision number in RevNum.txt is equal to the revision number of the latest revision. If they are the same, AutoBuild.bat doesn't build the revision because it already has built it. Otherwise, AutoBuild.bat downloads the new revision of EDK2.

After checking for new revisions, AutoBuild.bat runs as described in Part 1. Using schtasks for EDK2, you can create a schedule for AutoBuild.bat and send error messages to the people who created the bad revisions of EDK2. This can help to more efficiently monitor and manage revisions of EDK2.