Accessing Hudson Variables with a Free-Style Project

Here is a great article on creating a manifest file containing hudson variables so that you can know exactly what build number and svn number built your artifact. However, in my case I wanted to create a properties file under my maven2 project under src/main/resources and let maven filtering take care of the rest. But for some reason it wouldn't work. After some further research, I eventually found out that free-style projects appear to not work the same as a maven2 project in hudson when trying to access hudson variables.

In summary, hudson variables work as expected when you create a maven2 project in hudson. With a free-style project you have to perform an extra step. Why, I don't know; I am sure there is a good reason. It's just too late to figure it out.

Here are the extra steps you can follow to create a properties file containing hudson values.

Update POM
In your projects POM or parent POM add the following properties at the bottom

<project>
 ....
 <properties>
     <build.number>${BUILD_NUMBER}</build.number>
     <build.id>${BUILD_ID}</build.id>
     <job.name>${JOB_NAME}</job.name>
     <build.tag>${BUILD_TAG}</build.tag>
     <executor.number>${EXECUTOR_NUMBER}</executor.number>
     <workspace>${WORKSPACE}</workspace>
     <hudson.url>${HUDSON_URL}</hudson.url>
     <svn.revision>${SVN_REVISION}</svn.revision>
 </properties>
</project>

Create a properties file
Create a application.properties file under your maven2 projects src/main/resources directory.

Now add this to it

build.number=${build.number}
build.id=${build.id}
job.name=${job.name}
build.tag=${build.tag}
executor.number=${executor.number}
workspace=${workspace}
hudson.url=${hudson.url}
svn.revision=${svn.revision}