Coming from the .NET MVC world, I am confused on how .NET Core deals with multi-environment deployments. (Dev, Test, Production)
The tech used here are Bamboo (Build Server) + Octopus Deploy (CD).
.NET Core appears to be using appsettings instead, and web.config is only used for IIS Hosting.
Upon reading some guides, which suggests to add an Environment Variable "ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT" to the project to define the environment currently in.
This is the command I used to build in Bamboo.
dotnet publish -c Test ${bamboo.build.working.directory}\HelloWorld.sln
Questions...
1. I have appsettings.json, appsettings.Test.json, appsettings.Production.json.
It looks like the app knows which appsettings file to read from, based on the
ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT value.
How can I tell Octopus to use the correct file based on the environment I am deploying to?
Having a variable and multiple config files packaged up make things overly complicated, especially if you're using Octopus Deploy.
The only reason for having multiple .environment.json files is because these are probably held in source control and they have their values already set - so environment variables are probably all coming from the source code, rather than the release manager. Otherwise, they'd be identical files and Octopus would still be transforming them (which makes them redundant)
My advice would be to move to a single file, and move the variables into Octopus Deploy. Remove the ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT and you only need one file appSettings.json, which can be transformed during deployment to whatever environment.
ASP.NET Core Web Applications - Octopus Deploy Documentation
Hope this helps
I have a puppet master sources my application builds into a master folder. for eg. xxxxx_v1.0.0.zip and yyyyy_v1.0.8.zip [xxxxx gets deployed to a ser of servers and yyyyy to another set of servers].
What is the best way to handle sourcing on puppet master on new versions of my application builds, without editing the .pp files on the master to reference the new build number on the filename, preferably, automatic.
Thanks
A good way to build a suitable package for your operating system instead. Puppet can use those with
package { 'application-x': ensure => latest }
Failing that, you solve this
on the agent side, by fetching your application metadata from somewhere, e.g. with an exec of wget, then having it run a script to perform the deployment if necessary
on the master side using an ENC like the Puppet Dashboard, or better yet, Hiera, to hold your latest version information
If you really want to do this through Puppet's fileserver without touching any metadata and just dropping the files in your modules, you can try with the generate function.
$latest_zip_application_x = generate("/usr/local/bin/find_latest application_x")
file { 'application_x.zip':
...
source => "puppet:///modules/application_x/path/to/$latest_zip_application_x",
}
where /usr/local/bin/find_latest is a script that will find the most recent version of your package and write it to stdout.
This is pretty horrible practice though - you are really not catering to Puppet's strengths with constructs like these.
Jenkins official Wiki page for Matrix projects isn't really helping me; so I have a few questions.
We're trying to build a couple of projects that are all essentially the same, just some are being branded differently for our customers. In other words, the software / tests / etc. are all identical, except for some tweaks to turn BrandA into BrandB (or BrandC, etc.)
I figure I should be using a Matrix project to create builds for BrandA, BrandB, etc. While I haven't figured out all my steps yet (including how to rename executables after they're built) I know that I will need to pass the Brand Name to many of my Jenkins Powershell scripts during the build process, and then use that brand n the script.
How do I get these variables into my scripts? Are they automatically passed in to every build step in Jenkins? What is the variable name to use?
Finally, is there a good resource on building these multi-configuration projects in Jenkins? I can't seem to find anything comprehensive online.
If you usually build the job for BrandA and only occasionally for BrandB and BrandC a matrix project may not be what you want. I recommend, instead, using a parameterized job where the brand is a parameter whose default value is BrandA. If the parameter is named BRAND the parameter is accessible in all of the builds and publish steps with ${BRAND} and as an environment variable as %BRAND%.
I refer you to the parameterized build wiki for more details.
Yes, ${BRAND} and %BRAND% should work fine.
If you're using Maven, ${env.BRAND} does this too.
There's a plugin that you can see all Environment Variables that are available to your job/build.
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/EnvInject+Plugin
I'm not aware of that kind of process but I suggest you tu use the Copy project functionnality.
New Job
Copy From existing job
You will have a copy of your Job and you'll be able to setup easily all specific fields.
Fabric has become my deployment tool of choice both for deploying Django projects and for initially configuring Ubuntu slices. However, my current workflow with Fabric isn't very DRY, as I find myself:
copying the fabfile.py from one Django project to another and
modifying the fabfile.py as needed for each project (e.g., changing the webserver_restart task from Apache to Nginx, configuring the host and SSH port, etc.).
One advantage of this workflow is that the fabfile.py becomes part of my Git repository, so between the fabfile.py and the pip requirements.txt, I have a recreateable virtualenv and deployment process. I want to keep this advantage, while becoming more DRY. It seems that I could improve my workflow by:
being able to pip install the common tasks defined in the fabfile.py and
having a fab_config file containing the host configuration information for each project and overriding any tasks as needed
Any recommendations on how to increase the DRYness of my Fabric workflow?
I've done some work in this direction with class-based "server definitions" that include connection info and can override methods to do specific tasks in a different way. Then my stock fabfile.py (which never changes) just calls the right method on the server definition object.
I know there are posts that ask how one stores third-party libraries into source control (such as this and this). While those are great answers, I still can't find the answer to this:
How do you store third-party middleware/frameworks binaries that need to alter your compiler / IDE for the library to work properly? Note: for my needs, I don't need to store the middleware source, I only store header files / lib / JAR ..so that it's ready to be linked.
Typically, you simply link libraries to your app, and you are good. But what about middleware / frameworks that need more?
Specific examples:
Qt moc pre-processor.
ZeroC Ice Slice (ice) compiler (similar to CORBA IDL preprocessor).
Basically these frameworks/middleware need to generate their own code before your application can link to it.
From the point of view of the developer, ideally he wants to just checkout, and everything should be ready to go. But then my IDE/compiler will not be setup properly yet, so the compilation will fail..
What do you think?
Backup everything including the setup of the IDE, operating system, etc. This is what i do
1) Store all 3rd party libraries in source control. I have a branch for all the libraries.
2) Backup the entire tool chain which was used to build. This includes every tool. Each tool is installed into the same directory on each developers computer, so this makes it simple to setup a developers machine remotely.
3) This is the most hardcore, but prepare 1 perfect developer IDE setup which is clean, then make a VMWare / VirtualPC image out of it. This will be useful when you cant seem to get the installers to work in future.
I learned this lesson the painful way because I often have to wade through visual studio 6 code which don't build properly.
I think that a better solution is to make sure that the build is self-contained and downloads all necessary software for itself unless you tell it otherwise. This is the way maven works, and it is really handy. The downside is that it sometimes needs to download a application server or similar, which is highly unpractical, but at least the build succeeds and it becomes the new developers responsibility to improve the build if needed.
This does of course not work great if your software needs attended installs, but I would try to avoid any such dependencies in any case. You can add alternative routes (e.g the ant script compiles the code if eclipse hasn't done it yet). If this is not feasible, an alternative option is to fail with a clear indication of what went wrong (e.g 'CORBA_COMPILER_HOME' not set, please set and try again').
All that said, the most complete solution is of course to ship everything with your app (i.e OS, IDE, the works), but I doubt that that is applicable in the general case, how would you feel about that type of requirements to build a software product? It also limits people who want to adapt your software to new platforms.
What about adding 1 step.
A nant script which is started with a bat file. The developer would only have to execute one .bat file, the bat file could start nant, and the Nant script could be made to do anything you need.
This is actually a pretty subtle question. You're talking about how to manage features of the environment which are necessary in order to allow your build to proceed. In this case it's the top level of your code toolchain, but the problem can be generalised to include the entire toolchain, and even key aspects of the operating system.
In my place of work, we have various requirements of the underlying operating system before our code will successfully run. This includes machine-specific configurations as well as ensuring correct versions of system libraries and language runtimes are present. We've dealt with this by maintaining a standard generic build machine image which contains the toolchain requirements we need. We can push this out to a virgin machine and get a basic environment that contains the complete toolchain and any auxiliary programs.
We then use fsvs to version control any additional configuration, which can be layered on to specific groups of machines as needed.
Finally, we use custom scripts hooked in to our CI server (we use Hudson) to perform any pre-processing steps required for specific projects.
The main advantages for us of this approach is:
We can build and deploy developer and production machines very easily (and have IT handle this side of the problem).
We can easily replace failed machines.
We have a known environment for testing (we install everything to a simulated 'production server' before going live).
We (the software team) version control critical configuration details and any explicit pre-processing steps.
I would outsource the task of building the midleware to a specialized build server and only include the binary output as regular 3rd party dependencies under source control.
If this strategy can be successfully applied depends on whether all developers need to be able to change midleware code and recompile it frequently. But this issue could also be solved via a Continous Integration Server like Teamcity that allows to create private builds.
Your build process would look like the following:
Middleware repo containing middleware code
Build server, building middleware
Push middleware build output to project repository as 3rd party references
Update: This doesn't really answer how to modify the IDE. It's just a sort-of Maven replacement thingy for C++/Python/Java. You shouldn't need to modify the IDE to build stuff, if so, you need a different IDE or a system that generates/modifies IDE files for you. (See CMake for a cross-platform c/c++ project file generator.)
I've written a system (first in Ant/Beanshell at two different places, then rewrote it in Python at my current job) where third-partys are compiled separately (by someone), stored and shared via HTTP.
Somewhat hurried description follows:
Upon start, the build system looks through all modules in repo, executes each module's setup target, which downloads the specific version of a third-party lib or app that the current code revision uses. These are then unzipped, PATH/INCLUDE etc are added to (or, for small libs, copy them to a single directory for the current repo) and then launches Visual Studio with /useenv.
Each module's file check for stuff that it needs, and if it needs installing and licensing, such as Visual Studio, Matlab or Maya, that must be on the local computer. If that's not there, the cmd-file will fail with a nice error message. This way, you can also check that the correct version is in there
So there are a number of directories on the local disk involved. %work% needs to be set using an global environment variable, preferrable on a different disk than system or source-checkout, at least if doing heavy C++.
%work% <- local store for all temp files, unzip, and for each working copy's temp files
%work%/_cache <- downloaded zips (2 gb)
%work%/_local <- local zips (for development or retrieved in other manners while travvelling)
%work%/_unzip <- unzips of files in _cache (10 gb)
%work%&_content <- textures/3d models and other big files (syncronized manually, this is 5 gb today, not suitable for VC either)
%work%/D_trunk/ <- store for working copy checked out to d:/trunk
%work%/E_branches/v2 <- store for working copy checked out to e:/branches/v2
So, if trunk uses Boost 1.37 and branches/v2 uses 1.39, both boost-1.39 and boost-1.37 reside in /_cache/ (as zips) and /_unzip/ (as raw files).
When starting visual studio using bat files from d:/trunk/BuildSystem/Visual Studio.cmd, INCLUDE points to /_unzip/boost-1.37, while if runnig e:/branches/v2/BuildSystem/Visual Studio.cmd, INCLUDE points to /_unzip/boost-1.39.
In the repo, only a small set of bootstrap binaries need to be stored (i.e. wget and 7z).
We currently download about 2 gb of packed data, which is unzipped to 10 gb (pdb files are huge!), so keeping this out of source control is essential. Having this system allows us to keep the repo size small enough to use DVCS such as Mercurial (or Git) instead of SVN, which is very nice. (I'm thinking of using Mercurials bigfiles extension or file sharing instead of a separately http-served directory.)
It work flawlessly. Developers need only to check out, set an enviroment variable for their local cache, then run Visual Studio via a specific batch-file in the repo. No unzipping or compiling or stuff. A new developer can set up his computer in no time. (Installing Visual Studio takes the order of a magnitude more time.)
First time on a new computer takes some time, but then it's fast, only a few seconds. Downloads/unzips are shared on the local computer, do checking out additional branches/versions does not occupy more space. Working offline is also possible, you just need to get the zip files manually if new ones have been uploaded. (This mechanism is essential to test new versions/compilations of third-party libraries.)
The basics are in a repo on bitbucket but it needs more work before it's ready for the public. Apart from doc and polish, I plan to:
extend it to use cmake instead of raw
vcproj-files, to make it more
cross-platform.
script the entire
process from checkout/download of
third-party packages to building and
zipping them (including storing the
download in a local repo) ... currently that's on my dev computer. Not good. Will fix. :)
As for moc, we use Qt's Visual Studio add-in, which stores this in the .vcproj files. Works well. I do think that CMake is one of the best answers for this though