Lazy guide to automation/dev ops...

It's been a lot of talks regarding automation of development environments and DevOps approaches lately.

From my perspective, I've been involved in what's now being called DevOps, automation of development environments already back in 2005-2006, when I started getting more and more tired of constantly needing to do tiresome tasks again and again. So, my first feeble steps was done by creating more and more scripts that took away some of the need. First the simpler scripts that removed the need to constantly remember all in-parameters to for example gcc, sometimes beginning with setting an alias for quick redo's, later more complicated scripts to handle different configurations.

Again, this was mainly done due to laziness. I didn't feel like writing the same commands again and again, and also, going through logs was really boring, and I'm not the first to feel this way, as since the beginning of IT, the tenuous task of checking logs and texts added the tools such as grep, sed, awk and similar to the *nix portfolio of regexp tools which helps a lot to simplify the tasks of extracting and comparing pass-fail criteria's. 

After some trials and fails, which now actually added the nice feature of being able of creating logs of each execution, and thus also by adding simple parsers for extracting pass/fail of execution, enabling the advent of generated reports. True, the first ones was simple enough, but as time went on, more and more features where added to the parsers and report generators to clean up the contents and adding more information that was of use for enhancing product.

As most of the script executions took place on *nix machines, the usage of cron (scheduled execution) also enabled the 24h usage of nodes dedicated for test and build. Now, that really made the importance of the report generation greater, as the amount of jobs needed to be checked now increased 10-fold. Some things we did to simplify the checking was adding better pass-fail criteria to jobs, as well as starting to use web-servers to present the results of the jobs.

First there mostly generation of long lists of the jobs executed with single line containing links to the contents of the log directory for the job, then some first quick "passed/failed" depending on of course the outcome. Problem in the beginning was that most jobs actually failed, so to add some kind of "levels", the steps concept was added in, so, for example the steps: compile, basic test, build, module test, system test was introduced to see in which step was failing.

When the concept was introduced to others as a available view and queue to add jobs into, the input rate of suggested improvements increased. The amount was so great that there got to be a couple of different approaches. One was to introduce user views, and another to prioritize the need.

For a couple of years most of this was a pretty usual setup, popping up in most larger companies, if not using tools such as CruiseControl that became available around 2000, it wasn't until Hudson, later migrated over to the OpenSource version Jenkins, a specialized tool was used for setting up so called CI (Continuous Integration)  of build environments to trigger build/test/integration jobs, and keeping history easily to view and retrieve in a web-view.

...

Things change over time ...

Wow,

Tog en koll på den här gamla bloggen som jag faktiskt glömt att jag fortfarande hade, och kom fram till att senaste inlägget som var från 2015 inte alls stämmer längre... :-P


Sitter just nu på kontoret i Mjärdevi (dit jag hamnat igen, efter ett släpp från 2013 då jag började jobba på det amerikanska företaget JDSU, senare känt som Viavi Solutions), där jag jobbade till Februari 2017. Efter produkten jag jobbade med beslutats som avvecklingsbar, och jag samtidigt tröttnat på resorna tur-retur Oulu Finland i 2-veckors omgångar så kontaktade jag ett företag som visat intresse för min profil innan. Efter några möten kom vi överens om att jag passade in i deras företagsprofil, och har jobbat där sedan dess.

Första uppdraget blev på Kapsch TrafficCom nere i Jönköping, vilket innebar dags-pendlande. Det var fullt fungerade under den första tiden, och ett extremt roligt och utvecklande jobb, där jag fick chansen att dels bygga och designa en integrations-testbed för deras V2X produkt, samt även senare ta fram underlag och bygga större delen av produktions-testbedden för samma produkt.

Efter ett år med pendlande blev det dock lite för mycket för min numer sambo (förlovade), med att jag var borta hemifrån så efter lite klurande så visade det sig att det behövdes hjälp med ett projekt att sätta upp ett inhouse projekt, så jag avslutade det väldigt roliga konsultuppdraget nere i Jönköping och sitter alltså nu återigen i Mjärdevi.

Inte i samma hus, men jag jobbar med liknande uppgifter som tidigare när jag jobbade i Mjärdevi, dvs, test utveckling inom Telecom.

Hemma har det också ändrat sig mycket, från en stor flådig lägenhet på 230 Kvm ner till 80kvm med 3 barn och sambo, så har det blivit mycket trängre, och vi har inte ens hälften av bohaget vi hade innan i och med det. Dock har vi med tiden börjat få ett hyfsat skönt upplägg i lägenheten, så att det fungerar. Letar efter större mest hela tiden, men svårt med en ordentlig inkomst samt att helst vill vi ju hitta ett eget hus som vi har möjlighet att göra helt till vårt eget, men det känns som det kommer dröja många år till...

Men, vi har iallafall skaffat en rejäl husbil efter mycket om och men ! Den är ett rejält lyft i våra möjligheter att komma iväg och njuta av livet när vi väl har ledigt, och friheten med den gör allt lite enklare för oss ...

Nu tillbaka till jobbet.

New days, 2015 here we go !

Hi, and welcome to my latest blog-feed.

Started getting a bit tired of all the old stuff, and as I'm turning a new leaf, it's time to restart everything else as well.

I live in a great family, even if it's not completely ordinary, as I'm living with my ex-girlfriend, our child E, my son S and her son K.

We have a great relationship and seem to have a great deal of difficulty of leaving each other even if we no longer are a couple. I still adore and love her, and she still needs me around, so for the time being we're just keeping it like it is. When the time comes, we'll hopefully leave each other peacefully and with our children's best wishes.

So, with those words, I'll now leave that discussion and past references to how and what it's to be, and instead concentrate on the main issues in my life, the more important things.


 We are working hard right now, getting this year, the year of 2015, to be the best we've had for a long time now, with people falling ill, getting sick, and dying around us. Instead try to finally get some great times with as much of our plans getting in to play as possible !

We have:

- Sweden Rock - E's festival, and I'm working hard to get our Motor home up and running for that.
- Skogsröjet - Both of us usually work there. Motor Home should definitely be working this time..
- Rockstad Falun - My Festival ... Only thing is that it collides a bit with my daughters birthday, and this will be the last year I will be able to get away with it. Next year either they need to go with me, or I'll have to sit that festival out...

More to come later ...