CircleCI for continuous integration

Full Stack Software Development Blog

Using the free plan for CircleCI to build and run tests.

Here were the steps I followed

Chose the CircleCI free plan and use my github credentials to log into CircleCI.

Chose the texastoc-v2-spring-boot github repo for CircleCI to use. CircleCI added a key to this repo.


Followed the CircleCI directions to

• add a .circleci directory to my project.
• add a config.yml in the .circleci directory for a Java maven project

Now when I push to any branch CircleCI it downloads dependencies, compiles and run the tests.

Of course there were problems :)

Problem 1

My Java project is split into two modules: application and integration. That way I keep my integration tests separate from the application code. The integration module has a dependency on the application module.

I did not have a problem running the tests locally either in IntelliJ or using maven on the command line. But CircleCI choked on the integration module having a dependency on the application module. CircleCI actually wanted the application module as a library for the integration module to use.

I changed the config.yml so that the application module created a library.

Problem 2

When CircleCI attempted to run the test there was an obscure error.

I followed the instructions to add an ssh key to github which allowed me to run CircleCI in ssh mode. I was able to ssh into the build and look at the dump file. I googled the error and found a workaround that I added to my maven pom.xml.

Of course I added a comment to the pom.xml to a link to the stackoverflow solution to the file.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50661648/spring-boot-fails-to-run-maven-surefire-plugin-classnotfoundexception-org-apache