Hi all,

New BF user here. I've scoured the docs and can't find an answer so I'm hoping the Jazz community can help.

Does BuildForge have a way to verify a variable has a value (like bash's 'test -n', perl's 'defined()', and php's 'empty()')?

Currently, when I want to verify a variable (that may or may not have been set by a .tset), I create a verify step that runs on a Linux or Mac box to check the values of the variables we expect to be able to use in bash. So I have a step that .tsets the variable and inlines a library. In addition to its main work, the library verifies the variable has a value - failing if it doesn't and continuing if it does. The verification step is something like this:

if [ "${MY_PARENT_DIR}" != "MY_PARENT_DIR" ]; then

    echo VARTEST: [STATUS=PASS]MY_PARENT_DIR = ${MY_PARENT_DIR}[/STATUS]

else

    echo VARTEST: [STATUS=FAIL]MY_PARENT_DIR = ${MY_PARENT_DIR}[/STATUS]

    exit 1

fi

Since BF replaces the variable value with the variable name if the var isn't set, this is a good way to check if it's set. The world is fine and good until the variable has a Windows path separator in it. In this case, the verification step chokes depending on what the Win path sep is "escaping." For instance, if the variable contains a windows directory name with a trailing slash:

"MyDir\"

then the variable value is

MyDir"

(note the trailing " where the slash escaped it). Bash isn't happy with that at all so I need to find a more stable way of doing this.

If BuildForge doesn't have anything built-in, I imagine someone has solved this in a robust and repeatable way. Let me know what you've done.
:)

Hi,

There are a couple of things I can think of that you might try. I think the first option may require less refactor of your steps.

Build Forge can run Perl code that you've specified in the command text of a step if you use the #! directive at the top of the step and the location of the perl to use. For example, the following command text checks if a variable is defined. The one trick that I've used in this is to set the environment variable _NO_PREPARSE_COMMAND=1 for only this step so that the $ENV does not cause Build Forge to try to resolve it.

Step Command Text
#!C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe

if (defined($ENV{'TEST_VAR_1'})) {
print "Yes, the variable is defined. TEST_VAR_1 = " . $ENV{'TEST_VAR_1'} . "\n";
} else {
print "No, the variable TEST_VAR_1 is not defined!\n";
exit 1;
}

This is the output of the step log.

166 9/13/10 10:20 AM ENV _NO_PREPARSE_COMMAND=1
167 9/13/10 10:20 AM SCRIPT #!C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe
168 9/13/10 10:20 AM SCRIPT
169 9/13/10 10:20 AM SCRIPT if (defined($ENV{'TEST_VAR_1'})) {
170 9/13/10 10:20 AM SCRIPT print "Yes, the variable is defined. TEST_VAR_1 = " . $ENV{'TEST_VAR_1'} . "\n";
171 9/13/10 10:20 AM SCRIPT } else {
172 9/13/10 10:20 AM SCRIPT print "No, the variable TEST_VAR_1 is not defined!\n";
173 9/13/10 10:20 AM SCRIPT exit 1;
174 9/13/10 10:20 AM SCRIPT }
175 9/13/10 10:20 AM EXEC start
176 9/13/10 10:20 AM EXEC Yes, the variable is defined. TEST_VAR_1 = ORIGINAL_VALUE
177 9/13/10 10:20 AM EXEC end

This other option you could try might involve a few rearrangements of steps. This idea is to use an environment group set on a step with a variable having an action of 'Set if not set'. If the .tset did not set this variable, then you could have the 'Set if not set' go to a value that is an indicator that the variable wasn't defined (value = NOT_DEFINED).

Then you could have another step with a step type of 'Conditional' that could check if the known value for not being set was specified do this else do that .

bju