How to connect Gradle to custom EXE and hook its console output?

Question

Although this question involves the C language, the Gradle C Plugin, and an oldschool C static analyzer called splint, I believe this question can be answered by any Gradle guru who understands how to wire a Gradle build up to an executable process.

It's very simple: I have configured splint locally to analyze my simple C project's source code with the following command line:

splint +never-include -retvalint src/derpus/c/*.c

I am managing my project's build via Gradle (the C plugin), and would now like to invoke static analysis (splint) at the appropriate point in the build sequence (whatever that may be).

splint outputs to the console, and unfortunately no where else. And so I would like to see if I can "hook" this console output, check for certain keywords ("error", "warning", etc.) and fail/halt the build if splint complained about anything.

And so I'm trying to tackle several problems here:

• How to invoke splint from Gradle, and at the appropriate stage? For instance, whenever CodeNarc executes (after compile? after running tests?) is likely when splint should be invoked.
• How to pass the correct command-line args to splint with this invocation?
• How to hook splint's console output?
• How to fail the build when the console output contains certain keywords?

My best attempt thus far is:

task check(type:Exec) {
    commandLine 'cmd', '/c', 'C:/splint-3.1.1/bin/splint.exe', '+never-include', '-retvalint', 'src/derpus/c/*.c'
    standardOutput = new ByteArrayOutputStream()

    doLast {
        String output = standardOutput.toString()
        if(output.contains("error") || output.contains("")) {
            println "Chuggington!"
        } else {
            println "Meeska! Mooseka! Mickey Mouse! Output is: ${output}"
        }
    }
}

This produces:

Defining custom ▒check▒ task is deprecated when using standard lifecycle plugin has been deprecated and is scheduled to be removed in Gradle 3.0
:checkSplint 3.1.1 --- 12 April 2003

Finished checking --- no warnings

Chuggington!

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 3.327 secs

However I'm 100% confident my workingDir and commandLine args are incorrect, I'm not sure how I can fail/halt the build from inside that if-statement, and I'm not sure how to "position" this check task to occur before compilation and testing.

Any ideas, Gradle gurus?

Answer 1

workingDir is a directory where this tool should be run not where it's located. Typically it's project directory. When it comes to commandLine try:

commandLine 'cmd', '/c', 'splint.exe', '+never-include', '-retvalint', 'src/derpus/c/*.c'

In command above all the arguments should be separated with a comma: ,.

You can omit assignment operator =.

When it comes to parsing output - it doesn't work because in the closure it's not generated yet. Try:

standardOutput = new ByteArrayOutputStream()

doLast {
    String output = standardOutput.toString()
    if(output.contains("error") || output.contains("")) {
        println "Chuggington!"
    } else {
        println "Meeska! Mooseka! Mickey Mouse!"
    }
}