I'm reading documentation at it says that you should never redeploy a package, but what if we modify/add additional Logic Hooks as time goes by?
We need to click "deploy" after these modifications, but it says we shouldn't..
Does it mean we need to publish the package, perform changes in the zip then re-install the zip?
Just trying to get a sense of the work flow.
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I am trying to create a release pipeline in Azure DevOps. We already have a functioning build pipeline that works well, it is able to package the build with VSBuild and publish it as an artifact. Then in the release pipeline I am using an IIS Deployment job (which includes IIS Manage and IIS Deploy tasks) and it gets that artifact to deploy.
The problem is that we already have a publish profile (.pubxml) that should take care of pretty much everything the IIS Deployment is doing (at least as far I as I understand it). So to me it seems I have two options that don't require me to refactor the project configuration itself.
I can try to mimic the settings on the IIS Deployment job to match our .pubxml as closely as possible and manually applying any changes that aren't doable through the task settings. Obviously this is not ideal as that would require us to update both when ever we make changes and it introduces a large chance of the pipeline breaking down over time.
I can scrap the idea of using IIS Deployment and just use a VSBuild task that uses arguments /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:PublishProfile=Staging. This doesn't seem like best practices because it means my release pipeline isn't passing a build package to deploy, it is just creating a new one at each stage.
So is there a better option that would allow me to utilize the package I created with VSBuild and the .pubxml configuration together in a deploy? If that isn't possible then are either of my options the "correct" way to handle my situation or am I just missing another method of deployment I could use?
Thank you for any help or insight you can provide. Please let me know if there is any more information I can give that would be useful.
You can try using publish settings file (*.publishsettings) for your IIS deployment.
A publish settings file (.publishsettings) is different than a publishing profile (.pubxml) created in Visual Studio. A publish settings file is created by IIS or Azure App Service, or it can be manually created, and then it can be imported into Visual Studio.
To view more details, you can see:
Publish an application to IIS by importing publish settings in Visual Studio
Deploy your app to a folder, IIS, Azure, or another destination
So unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way I can achieve everything I wanted in this. The publish profiles are required for when we build the project so without making changes to how we configure those I need to build the project whenever I want to deploy. Ultimately I went with option #2. I essentially just copied most of the build tasks used in the testing pipeline and placed those in the release pipeline with a few modified commands to actually deploy the build once finished. It all seems to work just fine but still doesn't feel like best practices. If I am missing something please let me know and I will make updates as appropriate.
I am new to using Azure DevOps builds/pipelines, as the source code for the solutions I need to build are in TFVC I am limited to using the Classic (i.e. UI) builds rather than YAML.
When I want to test changes to a build definition I sometimes want to run a clean build, i.e. ensure that sources and artifacts from earlier builds are removed before the new build run, yet leave normal builds (i.e. ones triggered by changes in TFVC) to be incremental so to make builds faster.
I am used to TeamCity which has a plethora of options with regards to managing source and artifacts retention between builds, including a simple "clean" check box when triggering a manual build.
ADO Builds seems very limited in this regards and if I want to have a clean build it seems the only option is to change the build definition, select clean, run the build, then change the build definition again to remove the clean option.
Are there better ways to manage "ad-hoc" clean sources and artifacts in ADO Builds?
Those settings are either on/off. They wouldn't accept conditional run-time variables.
That being said, you might try leveraging the "Save as draft" option. It seems to create a DRAFT pipeline definition you could execute for your changes.
You could probably just flip it back to no clean before publishing. I don't really use that feature, but I am going to guess on the back-end it is using a different temporary definition id. That will probably mean on the build agent a new folder gets created under _work. If that is the case, you probably wouldn't even need to flip the clean sources since it will not exist the first run. It also probably means if this a self-hosted agent you will have doubled the work folder size and you might have to manage that clean-up after you are done.
If it does create the second work folder, this is probably preferable as it means you won't break the incremental build on the build directly following your test with clean. Whether you did that ad-hoc or through editing the build definition.
Build.Clean variable is deprecated, you can only use Clean option to clean local repo on the agent currently.
I'd like suggest you submit a user voice at website below, product team will evaluate it carefully:
https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/idea/post.html?space=21
One workaround is adding a Post Build Cleanup task in the end of your pipeline, when you want to run builds incrementally, you can disable this task.
I'm attempting to deploy a web site to Azure using VSTS. Basically, I commit code to the GIT repo and have it setup to run CI, so it begins building as soon as I commit. However, once it hits the release section, it never copies the code to the Azure web app, rather, it gives me this line:
Info: Updating file ({projectname}\error.txt).
It doesn't copy the files I changed, but rather always just copies this file. I checked and there is indeed an error.txt file in my website directory in Azure, but it is always blank.
This build/deploy process isn't "standard" because the build step only downloads from source code, it doesn't build, because the website isn't a "web application", but rather just a "web site", meaning it doesn't need to be built.
So my build step is as follows:
Get Sources
Run on Agent - this step is empty
so the idea is that it just downloads everything from source control, that's it.
Then, my release step is as follows:
Artefacts are from build step above
deploy to environment 1 (dev)
Azure app service deploy, using "package or folder" as $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/
Any idea what I might be doing wrong here?
So I actually figured this out and will leave this here in case anyone else needs it.
I admit I'm pretty new to the Azure/VSTS world, so maybe someone else is making my mistake as well.
If you don't need to "build" your project, then don't. I resolved it by simply skipping the build step altogether. What I was really after was to just download the files from source control and deploy them as-is.
In your release editor, you can specify which "artifact" you want to use to release, and one of the options is source control, which is what I did.
This would be useful for websites like mine where you don't need to build them (mine is DNN/DotNetNuke, so you don't build it before deploying).
I am working on a project with multiple people, a website application which requires webpack to be built, uglified, concatenated into a few files e.g. app.min.js, style.min.css etc. - As a result of this, in an effort to prevent merge conflicts we recently added the build folder to .gitignore, under the assumption that we would be able to build during deployment.
When pushing to the Master branch, we automatically "deploy" through Semaphore CI (similar to Travis) which runs composer install, npm install, and finally "npm run build" which triggers the webpack build. This is all built and then tested on the CI side of things, and then Semaphore automatically deploys to Amazon's Elastic Beanstalk where our application is hosted.
The problem with this is, it seems Semaphore doesn't upload the build it's just tested, but rather the Master branch itself which has no built JS or CSS. I'm wondering if there's a way to push these built files to deployment as well, or if running the entire build process AGAIN on Elastic Beanstalk is the only route. It seems unnecessary to have to do that process essentially 3 times, locally, CI, and then deployment. Every time a step like this is needed on EB the actual re-instantiation time gets longer, which I'd like to keep as short as possible.
Obviously if building it a 3rd time on EB is the only way to go about this then I'll have to, just wondering if there are better solutions for this whole workflow.
I haven't worked with Semaphore CI, but you might be able to use an .ebignore file.
If you create one, the cli will use that instead of your .gitignore file.
I find in some deployment situations you want the inverse of your .gitignore (all compiled, no src). It essentially lets you pick the files from your project directory that you want to deploy, in the same way as the .gitignore file.
Edit: I just noticed the documentation on aws is lacking. It only mentions file exclusion, but you can include files too.
Edit 2: I don't think Semaphore supports the use of .ebignore, so right now this solution isn't of any use. :(
I just had a great first experience with https://deploybot.com/. The can deploy directly to elastic beanstalk. It might be interesting or you.
I have a NSIS installer that we previously built using nAnt scripts that copy some files around and run makensis.exe via a exec task to build the installer exe. After the nant script completes, I have the compelte structure for our CD and also our download.
I was just doing a get from sourcesafe onto an unused desktop and using it as a build box, compiling there. Sometimes we would have a couple of files checked in that fix something critical. In those cases I would go to the build box, and very selectively get only those files, to avoid getting other changed files that we aren't ready to release yet. Basically I am able to allow development to continue and selectively include certain changed files into the installer for release.
Now we no longer have a free box, and need to build from our server. So I am setting up CI Factory so that the developer can kick the build off without remoting into the server. The one issue I am struggling with, is the best way to continue to allow this selective change control to occur. The default concept of CI that CI Factory implements is fine for internal development "head". However, I also want to setup a CCNet project that is run only on demand via a Force Build for this "public release" type of build.
This is what I've brain stormed so far, without being sure how well this will work, if at all(still figuring out what CCNet and CI Factory are all about). The "public release" CCNet project config/build would be setup such that it would not get latest. Modifications would not trigger a build. Since the other CCNet project that is using the default CI methodology(we'll call it the "CI project") of getting latest when changes are detected, then these two projects can't share the same working directory. So the "public release" would need a different working copy, so that its files won't get updated when the CI project's build is triggered. The developer would need to remote into the server, one VSS, selectively do a get into the "public release"'s working copy, and then force a build through CI Factory.
The disadvantage's I see with this is
1) Having to remote in to selectively do gets.
2) I have no idea how to allow a single CI Factory project to have two different working copies of the Product folder, so that each project configuration block has it's own.
3) I'm afraid of what kind of strangeness this might cause. I'm not quite sure yet how to specify a source control block in CCNet project config block, but prevent it from doing a get latest when it builds. I'm still gradually figuring out what things are in scripts and can be easily taken out without breaking other things, versus what is not meant to be mucked around with and/or is not configurable.
I would really like to hear about how others deal with this issue of selectively releasing changes, if you have a similar situation. I am constrained to VSS, so my immediate need is to solve this with that in mind, but at the same time I'd be interested in hearing how you manage this with other source control systems. I guess you would probably have a branch that is your latest developments branch, and then merge changes into the trunk whenever you want to release them? I really don't trust VSS for branching/merging, and I think the branching concepts might be a little too much overhead and learning curve for this shop. Like I said though, stories with other source control systems would be useful future knowledge for me.
Thanks in advance.
You need a branching structure in your repository to facilitate this. Something like the release branch method. Only select individuals can commit to this branch (or have a release/stable for that). Set up your manual CI launches to pull from the release branch as release nightly promote to milestone or final from there. I don't like the idea of manually modifying things on your build machine. Set up the changes in version control, in a safe place to prepare your release and let CI build from there, but manually triggered.
Check out these branching patterns. I suggested C3, codeline-per-release, often called release branching.
Heres an article on VSS branching that includes a link to merging.
This question looks similar.
Maybe you could move to another source control system with better support for this kind of thing. Any suggestions from MS people out there?