Java.lang.NullPointerException running flexunit ant task in 4.1 Beta 2

Question

Hello,
After trying to debug this all day, I thought I would ask the community.
I am trying out the new FU4.1 Beta 2 (3.5) from the downloads page.  We have a working CI system set up with 4.0, and I thought trying out 4.1 beta 2 would simply be a matter of replacing the binaries in my lib folder and re-running the ant script.  Evidently not, or else I am missing something.
After updating to the 4.1 Beta 2 binaries, if I re-run a sample project in Eclipse, the build fails with a java NullPointerException when the <flexunit> ant task is invoked. We have an involved setup that uses the groovy AntBuilder and other esoteric constructs, so I thought I would create a very simple test script similar to the sample CI project to see if that would work.  Unfortunately, I am still seeing the NPE.  The worst part is that there is absolutely no debug information provided - no message, no traceback.  I even attached the Ant source and debugged it. I could see the NPE being caught, but it contained a null message and null traceback.
Here is the simplified ant script:
<project name="tests" basedir=".">
    <target name="test-init" depends="">
        <mkdir dir="${build.dir}"/>
        <mkdir dir="${reports.dir}"/>
        <mkdir dir="${reports.xml}"/>
        <mkdir dir="${reports.html}"/>
        <!-- Setup Flex and FlexUnit ant tasks -->
        <!-- You can set this directly so mxmlc will work correctly, or set
        <taskdef resource="flexUnitTasks.tasks" classpath="${lib}/flexUnitTasks-4.1.0-beta2.18.jar" />
    </target>
    <target name="run-flex-tests" depends="test-init">
      <sequential>
        <!-- Execute TestRunner.swf as FlexUnit tests and publish reports -->
        <flexunit
            swf="${build.dir}/TestRunner.swf"
            toDir="${reports.xml}"
            haltonfailure="false"
            verbose="true"
            localTrusted="true"
            timeout="60000"/>
        <!-- Generate readable JUnit-style reports -->
        <junitreport todir="${reports.xml}">
            <fileset dir="${reports.xml}">
                <include name="TEST-*.xml" />
            </fileset>
            <report format="frames" todir="${reports.html}" />
        </junitreport>
      </sequential>   
    </target>
</project>
The output is:
Buildfile: C:\EclipseWorkspace\tests\Source\Flex\build_test.xml
test-init:
run-flex-tests:
[flexunit] Validating task attributes ...
BUILD FAILED
C:\EclipseWorkspace\tests\Source\Flex\build_test.xml:23: java.lang.NullPointerException
Total time: 297 milliseconds
Is there something obvious I am missing?
Thanks for any help!
Trevor

Answer 1

Brian,
OK, a colleague worked with me (thanks, John!) to debug the problem a little further, and I think we found the fundamental problem.  I wanted to post that info to save you some time...
Aside: One thing we did have to do was to rebuild the flexUnitTasks.jar to include debug information, since the binary in the 4.1 beta 2 package did not have debug=true.  I'd suggest that we might want to change the build script to build the binaries with debug moving forward.
Back to the problem.
The NullPointerException is thrown in TaskConfiguration::validateSharedProperties(), when equals() is invoked. Here is the code snippet:
   //if we can't find the FLEX_HOME and we're using ADL or compilation
   if((flexHome == null || !flexHome.exists()) && (testRunConfiguration.getPlayer().equals("air") || shouldCompile()))
      throw new BuildException("Please specify, or verify the location for, the FLEX_HOME property.  "
            + "It is required when testing with 'air' as the player or when using the 'testSource' element.  "
            + "It should point to the installation directory for a Flex SDK.");
In my case, I do not have a FLEX_HOME property set in Ant currently.  I'll bet most folks have this set, so the logic would run differently for them. For my case, the (flexHome == null) check is true.  That means that the testRunConfiguration.getPlayer().equals("air")check will occur next, and here is the problem. The "player" member is not set in the testRunConfiguration yet at this point, so testRunConfiguration.getPlayer() returns null. testRunConfiguration.setPlayer() is called in generateDefaults().  But generateDefaults() is not called until after validateSharedProperties() is called.  So, if properties initialization could be improved here and I think this code will run more robustly.
I can work-around my issue temporarily by just setting a FLEX_HOME property in Ant.  But I hope you will agree that the initialization issue with "player" still should be addressed. Would you like me to open a bug report, or is this thread enough?
Thanks,
Trevor