UWP applications under Windows 10 must be deployed before they can be run/debugged.
Visual Studio 2017 offers an option to disable deployment of a project on build:
This allows one to build a solution and check for compilation errors (e.g. ctrl+shift+b) without needing to wait several seconds (even on a machine with 64GB of RAM and an MLC or 3D XPoint SSD) for the deploy to go through.
However, the problem here is that attempting to debug the application (e.g. F5) will run the last-deployed version of the project, which is undesirable.
Is there an easy way to set the debug target for the project such that it is deployed on first debug (as is currently the case), subsequent debugs without changes to the build do not trigger an unnecessary deploy (which is the default, out-of-the-box behavior), but builds do not directly trigger a deploy?
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I have installed TFS 2018 and I'm trying to setup dedicated build server for this.
I have three windows servers one for TFS-WindowsBox1(TFS 2018 Installation completed), one for Build server-WindowsBox2(Build server setup steps and architecture needed), DB-WindowsBox3(DB Installation completed).
I'm looking for build server setup on WindowsBox2 and I'm looking best practices or steps to follow.
In administration section, I'm seeing agent download option in agent pools tab.
If i download and install agent on windowsbox2 server , will that be considered as Build server.
And what are the differences between agents and build server setup ?
TFS has no concept of a "build server". If an agent is configured on a box and the agent is running, then that box can run builds (and releases, since the release agent is the same piece of software). That's all there is to it. Build agents are assigned to agent pools, which dictate the set of available agents.
In previous iterations of the build system (XAML build, TFS 2010 - TFS 2013, although it's configurable up to TFS 2018), you had to register build controller and assign build agents to the build controller. XAML build is deprecated and should not be used except in the cases of pre-existing legacy builds, so if you're not already using XAML build, you can safely ignore this paragraph.
You can refer to this article (Deploy an agent on Windows) to setup TFS build/release agent, after that this is your "build server".
There are interactive and service mode and by default it is running in interactive mode, for this mode, you need to call run.cmd (in the same folder of config.cmd) to start agent, then the agent state will be online.
With service mode, you can check whether the corresponding service is running or not in Services.
I have a VSO release management definition in which I'm deploying a cloud service and then running some tests. The deployment executes without issues, but then the tests don't run, I recieve the following message in the logs:
Warning: No test is available in My DLL Path. Make sure that installed test discoverers & executors, platform & framework version settings are appropriate and try again.
Now, the strange thing is that this release is triggered by a build, which runs exactly the same set of tests and they all run happily.
I've included a runsettings file specifying the framework version (based on some SO posts I found from a year ago with a similar issue) but its made no difference. Been messing with this for nearly 2 days now with no progress. Any suggestions happily accepted!
Arrrrgh! So it turns out, if I deleted the whole project, created it again and added my tests again, it just works. Gremlins apparently!
Admins, if this needs to be deleted, go ahead
I'm setting up a build definition in Visual Studio Team Services using a Build Agent installed on my local machine for testing.
I'm following these instructions for creating a build agent, setting up a build definition, and queuing a build. I've created the agent on my local computer and it appears in the agent pool in VSTS. The agent is enabled and ready to go. I've also created a build definition that invokes my build script. Everything up to this point appears to work fine.
At this point I'm ready to queue a build and run it. The dialog for this looks like:
The dropdown labeled "Queue" only shows the Hosted agent pool. There should be a second pool called Default but it is not appearing. I can get it to "appear" by right clicking and inspecting the HTML and then using dev tools to change the value for the Hosted option. Hosted's ID is 2, I changed it to 1 since I assumed this to be the ID for Default. Once I do this I can click "OK" and the build runs as expected -- everything is checked out on my local machine by the build agent. Presumably my assumption about the ID value is correct.
So...everything it working correctly once I muck around with the plumbing a bit. But this is definitely not the way things should be working. Why is the Default queue not showing up in the dropdown? Do I need to flip a switch somewhere to make it work? Does my account not have enough access?
Some other details:
My account is a "Pool Administrator"
The build agent is not installed as a Windows service. I start it manually from a command prompt. I've not been able to install it as a service.
The machine that has the build agent installed on it is running Windows 10 x64 Pro. It was upgraded from Windows 8 x64 Pro.
I cannot use a hosted agent as I'm building a Unity project and Unity is not supported by for hosted agents.
I know I can use Unity Cloud Build but I do not want to.
UPDATE
I've removed my previous Build Agent and installed a new one, as a service, on a Windows Azure VM running Windows 10 Enterprise x64. With this change the "Hosted" and "Default" queues are appearing as expected.
Your account needs to also have access to the agent queue. Agent pools and agent queues are different entities, and being a "pool administration" does not necessarily mean you are a "queue administrator".
In my case it helped to execute the agent configuration in a console with elevated/administrator rights. If the agent configuration is done in a console with normal rights, the agent can still be configured properly, but its queue won't appear for selection when you will be queuing a new build.
When I deploy a web role to azure using the management portal, the process takes about 20 minutes. But, when I deploy using visual studio, it can take hours, and it's stuck in "Initializing"/"Waiting for host". Eventually, it does deploy and run normally.
Any thoughts on what's wrong?
Notes:
I'm deploying through visual studio in order to be able to use Intellitrace and the web deploy.
No errors appear at any time during the deployment
Installing web deploy, RDP, any plugins, etc. will lengthen the deployment time. I am pretty sure that Web Deploy in particular will cause the machine to reboot which adds a few mins. This is probably what you notice most (VM's reboot and it takes awhile to get back).
I believe that deploying from Visual Studio releases the host(s) and acquires a new one. This is evident by the fact that the IP addresses associated with the roles typically change when you deploy from Visual Studio.
But upgrading via the Portal re-images the existing host(s).
That presumably accounts for a significant proportion of the time difference, especially if there isn't a host available in the relevant upgrade or fault domain.
I'm using TeamCity for my CI builds, and I'd like to set up a second build for running automated UI tests on Windows XP and Windows 7 virtual machines.
I imagine the build working as follows:
Compile, run unit tests, etc.
Prepare MSI using WiX
Copy MSI to target test machines
Remotely execute MSI's
Copy test harness code to remote machine
Run tests
Build finishes
The automated UI tests are written using NUnit and would need to be run directly on the test virtual machine (they can't run remotely). It's important that if the tests fail, it appears in the TeamCity build log and the build fails. I'd rather not install VS or the TeamCity build agents on either of the test virtual machines.
It seems that most of this should be possible using psexec.exe. Are there any alternative (preferably open source) tools that I should look at?
takes a deep breath
We were looking into something to help us out with our automated UI tests. We use ranorex to test the UI and TeamCity/Msbuild to execute the tests.
We never found any tools to help us out (I’m constantly keeping an eye out for some so will monitor this thread) but here is what we did instead.
The CI server copies the setup files and test scripts to the Testing Host Server.
The CI server then launches a custom app on the Testing Host Server providing the name of the VM to launch.
The Test Host Server then launches the VM software, using Virtual PC.exe -singlepc -pc vhdname.vhd -launch , and waits for it to shutdown (after it’s run its tests).
The VM grabs the setup files and scripts from the network location and executes.
After the tests are run it then returns the results to a networked location and shuts itself down.
Control is returned to the custom app.
Control is returned to the CI server which determines from the results if it has passed or failed (and updates the UI so developers are made aware of the result).
Results are collection as artifacts in TeamCity and tagged in Svn.
I think that's everything. Its convoluted, however, it works. Hope someone of that helps you.
Jeff Brown of the Gallio team has been talking about a tool called Archimedes that he's planning to write to support this kind of requirement. It sounds promising, but I don't think there has been much progress on it so far.
In the mean time though, there is something in the Gallio project called VM Tool that may do what you want. It provides commands to stop, start and snapshot virtual machines, and more importantly, to copy files back and forth and execute commands.
I presume you have also considered Powershell Remoting?