propCom - requirements and todos

This post is a collection of requirements for propCom. Keep in mind, that this is work in progress.

Requirements
The following list contains desired functions and requirements  for propCom. It's a kind of wish list and don't hesitate to comment your suggestions.

• Two modes: simple comparison of two Java property files and multiple comparison defined by a CSV-File
• build ant task in order to integrate property file checking to your ant scripts
• Comparison means checking equality of key sets in two property file. It means not checking if property values are identical
• Output is a CSV/XML-File (not decided yet) , maybe similar to JUnit test results
• proper exception handling (e.g. when comparing multiple files, define what to do if one file can not be found)

ToDos

• restructure code (input, functional code, output formatter)
• write proper readme
• add license statement
• add proper bash script

propCom - first Release

We proudly present propCom version 0.1 that can be downloaded at SourceForge on the propCom repository. This is a first release and far away from being usable in real world projects. For now propCom is a command line tool and we will develop all desired functions for command line usage. When the functional code is somewhat mature and structured a custom developed ant task will make use of that code.

propCom - some more details

When developing Java Enterprise (JEE) applications property files are widely used. Even in medium projects soon you have at least half a dozen of these property files. So deploying (see and please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_deployment) such a software is a sophisticated step in software devlopment. Now a productive version is usually only one of several instances to establish.
Especially when using agile development methods like scrum setups for feature testing, user acceptance testing, integration testing,... are necessary. Therefore your half dozen property files multiply with the number of setups (or environments). And that means you waste a lot of time and panic to find that forgotten property needed for that feature that has to be tested till yesterday the latest...
So this is the motivation for developing a tool like propCom. First step is developing a java command line tool that can be used to quick check if a given list of property files have the same key sets. As this is not that useful (I know Java on CLI will never match Bash or Perl) but eventual goal is an Ant/Maven integration. This way completness checks on property files can be done automatically.
Ok folks that's it for today. Next post I will show the then finished CLI version.