We have a couple of cloud services and do a Continuous Delivery to a test environment via Team Build.
For the production environment, we have our own deployment powershell script. This script needs a .cspkg file for deployment.
My problem is now that I haven't found a way to let team build just create a .cspkg file but not to publish it to Azure.
I've used the AzureContinousDeployment.11.xaml template and it insists on publishing the package.
I've tried to set the "Deployment Settings Name" to an empty string. The build runs without errors, but that way, no package is created.
Is there a way to stop it somewhere in between?
Maybe something I could change in the .azurePubxml file to achieve that?
Environment: VS2012, Team Foundation Service (visualstudio.com)...
On the Process tab of the edit definition:
If you clear out the Deployment Settings Name and all the values under Publishing - Azure Cloud Service and Publishing - Azure Website (except you can leave True for the Allow Upgrade) the building template won't know where to publish the project.
Also on the Build Defaults tab of the edit definition:
Select the "Copy build output to the following Source Control folder (this folder will be created if it does not exist):"
Add some name and path like: "$/your cloud service/drops"
That will cause all your builds to be moved to the drops folder after a successful build. In those drops folders, there will be a app.publish directory that will have your *.cspkg and *csfg files.
I have my custom build template xaml invoke the MSBuild task (Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Workflow.Activities.MSBuild) on the Azure project (.ccproj file) with the "Publish" target.
(Despite having the same name as the UI command that pushes the package to Azure, the "Publish" target just means "generate the package without pushing it anywhere".)
Related
I create a web project with Visual Studio.
I use GitHub desktop app to push my code to my Github
I create an Azure DevOps project throught the Azure portal to create a CI and don't change anything
When I commit a change all the CI run, the build is done with success and a new deployment is done.
To be sure everything work I did 2 differents tests
First : I created a new HTML file in my project with the other HTML files. When I commit, build and deployment run on Azure Devops without error, but I cannot see my new file in the wwwroot folder
Second : I updated a existing HTML file. When I commit, build and deployment run on Azure Devops without error, and I can see my update on the file present on the web app.
Why this difference ? I would like understood why update work correctly but not the add. I don't know where start to troubleshoot the issue
Could you please check the "build action" of the new .cshtml file?
In visual studio, right click on the file and go to properties.
Check if the build action is set to "Content", if not set it to content and commit.
Other build actions sometimes will not show any error but the view file will not be copied upon build. This is not Azure DevOps issue, rather visual studio filetype issue.
Let me know if this was the case. Good luck :)
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 using VSTS Release management to deploy artifacts to IIS websites. I have several Web applications and web services to be deployed. So, i am trying to figure out what sort of tasks that best fits my situation.
I have created a build definition with Visual Studio Build Task for projects as this one:
which works fine but i need to add a task for copying the artifacts Under IIS Website Directory.
The other approach is to use IIS web deployment as a task in Release definition, so I created the build definition as:
However, it expects a Publish Profile (the build fails because it can't find it). I don't need to create a publish profile for each project in the application because this would be too much work.
Is there is a workaround for that or what is preferred approach for this?
You can update your build definition to generate a web deployment package and upload it to artifacts. And then in Release Management, add a task to run "projectname.deploy.cmd" in the deployment package to deploy it to your IIS server. Refer to this link for details: How to: Install a Deployment Package Using the deploy.cmd File Created by Visual Studio.
And you can also enable FTP Publishing on your IIS server and add a task in your release to publish the artifacts via FTP. You may need this task:
FTP Uploader.
My Continuous Delivery with TFS / VSTS – Server Configuration and Application Deployment with Release Management blog post (with reference to some previous posts) has all the details you need for deploying your artefacts to target nodes using Windows Machine File Copy tasks then use PowerShell on Target Machines tasks to get them in to correct locations and to do token replacement and anything else that's required.
I would recommend using PowerShell DSC so that IIS is properly configured before deployment but that's not required. Where possible for web apps I favour keeping things very simple by creating artefacts that contain all the web files that are needed for a particular folder and then just using plain xcopy for the deployment.
If you need more control you can also use my MSDeploy VSTS extension to deploy a MSDeploy package
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rschiefer.MSDeployAllTheThings
https://dotnetcatch.com/2016/04/20/msdeployallthethings-vststfs-extension-is-public/
I am working on a CI process with automated deployment. TFS Build is building the solution, and it then uses an InvokeProcess task to kick off a Powershell script. The Powershell script deploys the database changes as a dacpac using sqlpackage, reporting services reports using the web service, fonts to the SSRS server, and the website itself to 1 or more web servers - the whole process uses a deployment configuration file to define drop paths, server ips, installation folders etc. There will be one of these per environment.
I would like to be able to build the solution and deploy to an internal server to run automated tests as part of the automated build. Once tests are completed, and the build has been manually checked, I'd then like to be able to kick off another Build definition which only has the deployment portion of the standard build template, which will simply take a build number or build drop location, and deploy the same build to a different environment (i.e. staging, prod etc.)
The issue I have is that I'm currently managing most of my web/app configuration using config file transformation - i.e. I have build definitions for Debug, Test, Prod etc. and then Web.Debug.config, Web.Test.config etc. I only want to carry out one build, and then deploy that same build to different environments, however at the moment the build will only generate configuration files for one environment - i.e. whatever the build configuration is.
Would the best approach be to generate all config files (or actually pre-createg complete config files for each environment), and then just choose the appropriate one for the specific deployment? Or should I store the env specific config in my deployment configuration file and update the appropriate keys using powershell when deploying?
What would be the normal/recommended approach here?
I'd suggest creating new Configurations for each target environment (e.g. by default you have Debug/Release, create some more). Then use the built-in web.config transforms, for non web-projects use Slow Cheetah
This will spit out pre-configured build outputs for each configuration you specify you want build (in your Build Definition).
I've managed to get Teamcity running and connecting into bitbucket and the final step I'd like would be to get the MVC 4 project copied into another folder on the server ready for an xcopy deployment onto a web host.
I'm using MSBUILD, as the build agent.
Thanks in advance.
Preferred way is to use publishing targets in MSBuild.
Add new build step with runner type MSBuild
Set Build file path to your web project csproj file
Set Target to Clean;Build;Publish
Set Command line parameters to /p:Configuration=Release;PublishDir=\\your\target\path
Hope this helps.
You could use the CommandLine buildrunner to xcopy.
Personally I would not even copy the result to a different server.
For deployment I would have a deployment project in Teamcity that gets the required artifcat via wget from the Teamcity Rest-Api and uploads it to the hosting provider.
This can also be done in CommandLine buildrunner.
Under general settings
Click "Show advanced options"
Under Artifact Paths you can specify what you would like put under a new folder
**/* => target_directory
Or you can zip up your files and put under a new folder like this
**/* => newfolder/mypackage.zip
See more details here: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/teamcity/2019.2/configuring-general-settings.html#ConfiguringGeneralSettings-ArtifactPaths