Run test and coverage report with ant build in Windows

So, you want to run test and coverage report commands in Windows environment. For example, you want to run kahlan command for test, then make coverage report by istanbul and istanbul-merge.

Based on the ant documentation on exec part, it noted as follow:

The task delegates to Runtime.exec which in turn apparently calls ::CreateProcess. It is the latter Win32 function that defines the exact semantics of the call. In particular, if you do not put a file extension on the executable, only .EXE files are looked for, not .COM, .CMD or other file types listed in the environment variable PATHEXT. That is only used by the shell.
Note that .bat files cannot in general by executed directly. One normally needs to execute the command shell executable cmd using the /c switch.

If you are familiar with ant command, usually, you can create a build.xml file as default build configuration. You can create another build file that you can mention it when run the ant command, eg: build-windows.xml:

$ ant -buildfile build-windows.xml

Your build-windows.xml then can use “cmd” as executable property with /c /path/to/executable-file as argument. The file will like below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project name="Your Application name" default="build">

    <property name="toolsdir" value="${basedir}/vendor/bin/"/>
    <property name="moduledir" value="${basedir}/module/"/>

    <target name="build"
            depends="kahlan,coverage-report"
            description=""/>

    <target name="kahlan"
            description="Run kahlan">

            <!-- Application -->
            <exec executable="cmd" failonerror="true" taskname="kahlan">
                <arg
                    line="/c ${toolsdir}kahlan.bat
                    --spec=${moduledir}Application/spec/
                    --src=${moduledir}Application/src
                    --istanbul=coverage/coverage-application.json
                    "/>
            </exec>
            <!-- Application -->

            <!-- other modules to be tested here -->

    </target>

    <target name="coverage-report"
            description="Run coverage report generation">
            
            <!-- merge coverages for many modules test -->
            <exec executable="cmd" failonerror="true" taskname="istanbul merge">
                <arg line="/c istanbul-merge --out coverage.json coverage/*.json"/>
            </exec>
            
            <!-- make report -->
            <exec executable="cmd" failonerror="true" taskname="istanbul report">
                <arg line="/c istanbul report"/>
            </exec>

    </target>

</project>

With above, when you run the command, if it succeed, it will likely as follow:

$ ant -buildfile build-windows.xml
Buildfile: D:\app\build-windows.xml

kahlan:
   [kahlan]             _     _
   [kahlan]   /\ /\__ _| |__ | | __ _ _ __
   [kahlan]  / //_/ _` | '_ \| |/ _` | '_ \
   [kahlan] / __ \ (_| | | | | | (_| | | | |
   [kahlan] \/  \/\__,_|_| |_|_|\__,_|_| | |
   [kahlan]
   [kahlan] The PHP Test Framework for Freedom, Truth and Justice.
   [kahlan]
   [kahlan] src directory  : D:\app\module\Application\src
   [kahlan] spec directory : D:\app\module\Application\spec
   [kahlan]
   [kahlan] ......................................................  11 / 11 (100%)
   [kahlan]
   [kahlan]
   [kahlan]
   [kahlan] Expectations   : 11 Executed
   [kahlan] Specifications : 0 Pending, 0 Excluded, 0 Skipped
   [kahlan]
   [kahlan] Passed 11 of 11 PASS in 1.831 seconds (using 8Mo)
   [kahlan]
   [kahlan] Coverage Summary
   [kahlan] ----------------
   [kahlan]
   [kahlan] Total: 100.00% (25/25)
   [kahlan]
   [kahlan] Coverage collected in 0.035 seconds

coverage-report:
[istanbul report] Done

build:

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 4 seconds

That’s it!

References:

• https://community.alfresco.com/thread/216002-lsexecutable-doesnt-work-on-windows
• http://ant.apache.org/manual/Tasks/exec.html