Cobertura argument list too long

Question

I am trying to generate code coverage reports using the cobertura plugin.

I have this dependency in my pom.xml

<plugin> <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId> <artifactId>cobertura-maven-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.6</version> <executions> <execution> <phase>test</phase> <goals> <goal>cobertura</goal> </goals> <configuration> <formats> <format>html</format> <format>xml</format> </formats> </configuration> </execution> </executions> <configuration> <formats> <format>html</format> <format>xml</format> </formats> </configuration> 

When I build my project using this target -U -B clean install cobertura: cobertura, I get the following error on my jenkins CI

  16:37:31 [ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.codehaus.mojo:cobertura-maven-plugin:2.6:instrument (default-cli) on project TestModule: Unable to execute Cobertura. Error while executing process. Cannot run program "/bin/sh": error=7, Argument list too long -> [Help 1] 16:37:31 org.apache.maven.lifecycle.LifecycleExecutionException: Failed to execute goal org.codehaus.mojo:cobertura-maven-plugin:2.6:instrument (default-cli) on project TestModule: Unable to execute Cobertura. 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoExecutor.execute(MojoExecutor.java:216) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoExecutor.execute(MojoExecutor.java:153) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoExecutor.execute(MojoExecutor.java:145) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoExecutor.executeForkedExecutions(MojoExecutor.java:364) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoExecutor.execute(MojoExecutor.java:198) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoExecutor.execute(MojoExecutor.java:153) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoExecutor.execute(MojoExecutor.java:145) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.LifecycleModuleBuilder.buildProject(LifecycleModuleBuilder.java:84) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.LifecycleModuleBuilder.buildProject(LifecycleModuleBuilder.java:59) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.LifecycleStarter.singleThreadedBuild(LifecycleStarter.java:183) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.LifecycleStarter.execute(LifecycleStarter.java:161) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.doExecute(DefaultMaven.java:317) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.execute(DefaultMaven.java:152) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.execute(MavenCli.java:555) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.doMain(MavenCli.java:214) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.main(MavenCli.java:158) 16:37:31 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) 16:37:31 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:76) 16:37:31 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) 16:37:31 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:602) 16:37:31 at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.launchEnhanced(Launcher.java:289) 16:37:31 at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.launch(Launcher.java:229) 16:37:31 at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.mainWithExitCode(Launcher.java:415) 16:37:31 at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:356) 16:37:31 Caused by: org.apache.maven.plugin.MojoExecutionException: Unable to execute Cobertura. 16:37:31 at org.codehaus.mojo.cobertura.tasks.AbstractTask.executeJava(AbstractTask.java:244) 16:37:31 at org.codehaus.mojo.cobertura.tasks.InstrumentTask.execute(InstrumentTask.java:139) 16:37:31 at org.codehaus.mojo.cobertura.CoberturaInstrumentMojo.execute(CoberturaInstrumentMojo.java:162) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.plugin.DefaultBuildPluginManager.executeMojo(DefaultBuildPluginManager.java:106) 16:37:31 at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoExecutor.execute(MojoExecutor.java:208) 16:37:31 ... 23 more 16:37:31 Caused by: org.codehaus.plexus.util.cli.CommandLineException: Error while executing process. 16:37:31 at org.codehaus.plexus.util.cli.Commandline.execute(Commandline.java:656) 16:37:31 at org.codehaus.plexus.util.cli.CommandLineUtils.executeCommandLine(CommandLineUtils.java:144) 16:37:31 at org.codehaus.plexus.util.cli.CommandLineUtils.executeCommandLine(CommandLineUtils.java:107) 16:37:31 at org.codehaus.mojo.cobertura.tasks.AbstractTask.executeJava(AbstractTask.java:240) 16:37:31 ... 27 more 16:37:31 Caused by: java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "/bin/sh": error=7, Argument list too long 16:37:31 at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(ProcessBuilder.java:1042) 16:37:31 at java.lang.Runtime.exec(Runtime.java:615) 16:37:31 at java.lang.Runtime.exec(Runtime.java:526) 16:37:31 at org.codehaus.plexus.util.cli.Commandline.execute(Commandline.java:636) 16:37:31 ... 30 more 16:37:31 Caused by: java.io.IOException: error=7, Argument list too long 16:37:31 at java.lang.UNIXProcess.<init>(UNIXProcess.java:139) 16:37:31 at java.lang.ProcessImpl.start(ProcessImpl.java:152) 16:37:31 at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(ProcessBuilder.java:1023) 16:37:31 ... 33 more 

The design works successfully on my Windows computer, but does not work on jenkins . When I downgrade cobertura to 2.5.1, this error goes away, but I get some exceptions for parsing since the parser for cobertura for 2.5.1 does not update with Java syntax.

Can someone help me get this working for versions 2.6.0 and above for cobertura

Answer 1

This borders on lines of relevance but may offer help.

This is due to the linux constraint where arguments cannot exceed 128 KB. See Linux Kernel Constant: MAX_ARG_STRLEN https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/include/uapi/linux/binfmts.h

Inside Jenkins, when you read / from a variable where this value is exceeded, you will get this error. In my case, I had a github webhook that ran a Jenkins job and set the payload parameter to some string> than this limit. Attempting to read this parameter will cause this error.

To work around the problem, I have a child job that uses the rest-api call to read the value from the parent

You can let the parent job fail, but let the child job run in all cases. Below is the incorrect function that I used to pull information. (Shortened error checking and comments for short)

 def get_parameter_value_from_parent(): host = 'https://[YOUR_COMPANY].ci.cloudbees.com' this_build_url = os.environ.get('BUILD_URL') request_auth = (JENKINS_USER, JENKINS_TOKEN) url = '{0}/api/json'.format(this_build_url) parameter_name = 'payload' payload = '' # # Get the upstreamBuild number, and the upstreamUrl # so we can put together a link to the upstream job # response = requests.get(url, auth=request_auth) this_build = json.loads(response) build_number = '' short_url = '' actions = this_build['actions'] for action in actions: if action.get('causes'): for cause in action.get('causes'): build_number = cause['upstreamBuild'] short_url = cause['upstreamUrl'] parent_url = '{host}/{short_url}{build}/api/json'.format(host=host, short_url=short_url, build=build_number) # # Now get the payload from the parent job by making REST api call # response = requests.get(parent_url, auth=request_auth) upstream_build = json.loads(response) actions = upstream_build['actions'] for action in actions: if action.get('parameters'): for parameter in action.get('parameters'): if parameter['name'] == parameter_name: value = parameter['value'] payload = value return payload print 'Error: Unable to return payload from parent jenkins job: {0}'.format(parent_url) sys.exit(1) 

Answer 2

The entire shell has a limit on the length of the command line. The UNIX / Linux / BSD has a limit on the number of bytes that can be used for a command line argument and environment variables.

When you start a new process or type a command, these restrictions apply and an error message appears on the screen as follows:

Argument list too long

Cobertura tries to execute a shell command:

 getLog().debug( "Working Directory: " + cl.getWorkingDirectory() ); getLog().debug( "Executing command line:" ); getLog().debug( cl.toString() ); int exitCode; try { exitCode = CommandLineUtils.executeCommandLine( cl, stdout, stderr ); } catch ( CommandLineException e ) { throw new MojoExecutionException( "Unable to execute Cobertura.", e ); } 

In fact, the plugin is trying to execute a java process to start cobertura:

  Commandline cl = new Commandline(); File java = new File( SystemUtils.getJavaHome(), "bin/java" ); cl.setExecutable( java.getAbsolutePath() ); cl.addEnvironment("CLASSPATH", createClasspath()); String log4jConfig = getLog4jConfigFile(); if ( log4jConfig != null ) { cl.createArg().setValue( "-Dlog4j.configuration=" + log4jConfig ); } cl.createArg().setValue( "-Xmx" + maxmem ); cl.createArg().setValue( taskClass ); if ( cmdLineArgs.useCommandsFile() ) { String commandsFile; try { commandsFile = cmdLineArgs.getCommandsFile(); } catch ( IOException e ) { throw new MojoExecutionException( "Unable to obtain CommandsFile location.", e ); } if ( FileUtils.fileExists( commandsFile ) ) { cl.createArg().setValue( "--commandsfile" ); cl.createArg().setValue( commandsFile ); } else { throw new MojoExecutionException( "CommandsFile doesn't exist: " + commandsFile ); } } else { Iterator<String> it = cmdLineArgs.iterator(); while ( it.hasNext() ) { cl.createArg().setValue( it.next() ); } } 

So, first of all, enable the DEBUG cobalter trace to show the executed shell command.

I think the problem will be the class path used in version 2.6, and the one used in version 2.5.1.

Please enable debug tracing and post the result:

https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Logging