My company recently started getting up to date on the usage of TFS, source control, and branching strategies. Our current branching strategy is the basic 'Dev > Main > Release' method, which works well for our small team. However, the issue lies with our automated tests. All of our integration tests and UI tests are written in C# and executed in a nightly build process. In effort to keep source clean and well kept, where exactly should we place the automated test code?
You could place the automated tests inside of each branch. Your automated tests can be merged and treated just like regular code since it will be changing for new development.
The other option could be for you to place it where your projects build-types and build files reside.
It is important to make sure it is checked into source control.
Related
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.
We are using Visual Studio Team Services.
We have a Prod-Branch which is builded by our Prod-Build-Definition and deployed by our Prod-Release-Definition to our Test / Integration and Production Environments.
With each Prod-Release deployed to the customer, we create a Prod-Rel-Version-x.x.x Branch from the Prod-Branch (in Case we need that for a Hotfix).
During the Sprint we are developping on a Dev-Branch which is builded by our Dev-Build-Definition and deployed by our Dev-Release-Definition to our DEV Environment for Developer Tests.
After the Sprint (or from time to time) the Dev-Branch is merged to the Main-Branch and then to the Prod-Branch. From there it is deployed to the different Stages for Testing by the customer.
When there is a Hotfix-Case, we fix the bug on the Prod-Rel-Version-x.x.x Branch and would like to reuse our existing Prod-Build-Definition to build this Hotfix-Version and deploy to the different stages by the existing Prod-Release-Definition for testing and going live with this version.
How can we reuse our Prod-Build-Definition with this different Branch (Prod-Rel-Version-x.x.x Branch instead of the Prod-Branch)?
When I look at the build definition, I think i would be possible, just be editing the Server Path (Repository > Mappings) from $/NameOfOurApp/Prod to $/NameOfOurApp/Prod-Rel-Version-x.x.x)...that should do the trick or not? But from what I read, it's not possible to use Build-Variables in Server Mappings, so I cannot change this variable for example in the Queue new Build Dialog...
What's the best way to accomplish my scenario?
The only way to do this is to create a single build definition which downloads all the branches. Then use variables in the tasks to select the version to build. This will become very messy (and slow) very fast.
Instead it's much easier to clone the build definition. Alternatively you can create a Build Definition Template from an existing build definition and use that to create a new Build Definition.
A much, much better solution however, is not to rely on so many branches.You only need the branch when you really need to make a hotfix, and you only need the stages branches when you have a lot of findings in higher stages. By improving teh way you work, you'll be able to get rid of the branches, simplifying the work for all.
Update
VSTS and TFS 2018 now support the use of variables in the workspace definition.
In a CI environment, what exactly is considered a broken build?
There are several answers I can imagine (any combination of compiles, tests pass, metrics are in range, documentation exists etc.) , but I am not sure which of these are cannoncial.
For example, just today it happened to me that I actually checked in all code changes but forgot to commit the Visual Studio project file, thus breaking the unit tests. (even though I literally triple checked my commit, as it's a public OSS project on google code).
I was easily able to fix this in under a minute after my first commit, but should I consider myself a buildbreaker now?
How do you configure your CI environment: Is every revision built or only the newest version after each complete build, or do you use time based checking for new revs?
Ideally, you have
automated script that is scheduled to run each night to build the application from source code.
Scripts to copy the binaries to a directory/set of directories from which another script can be run to deploy the application if it is running in your environment, or used to create deliverables for a customer.
Automated suite of tests that run and verify all components pass all tests.
Automated script that verifies that the build has been built correctly.
Automated script/monitoring system that sends out an alert if the verification script fails.
When an alert is generated by the above process, then that is considered "breaking the build".
But since procedures/processes can vary from company to company, there may be alternate definitions. In some places it may be breaking the unit tests. Others it may be checking in source code that results in the code being unabl to compile.
Breaking the build is commiting any changes that make it impossible (or possible but not smart to do) to deploy the project.
Fixing a broken build does not repair the broken build, but makes it possible to create a new non-broken build.
I configure my CI-server to create a minimal build on every commit, and create a maximum build every period of time. The period depends on the number of people working on the project (more people is more commits) and the build duration (You can run your unit test suite every time, but the 30min. acceptance test suite once or twice a day).
Breaking a build is preventing any user that relies on the same standard tools and set of code than your CI environnment to get a compiling and running system.
If your coworkers cannot compile the system when they're up to date, because some config is missing, the build is broken, isn't it ?
If you coworkers cannot be confident that unit tests pass, because one of them is flaky, the build is broken, isn'it ?
If you have automated performance tests, and you're project have to be optimized, I would go as far as too say that if you code doesn't run fast enough, you've broken the build (but that is arguable)
I would not be so strongly minded about code coverage, or other metrics for example.
Breaking the build can happen. CI is just there to make sure it doesn't happen too much on the day you're supposed to ship ;)
for us, we use the term "breaking the build" any time the test suite fails after a new commit.
so, in your instance, yes you would have broken the build (according to our company at least)
As long as you broke the build because of a simple human error (like forgetting to commit something) and as long as this is an exception and not the rule, I would say it's OK. As long as you take care to fix this quickly :)
On the other hand, if somebody breaks builds on a regular basis by not executing the complete build locally on his/her machine before committing, then this is a sign of an ill-disciplined team member who doesn't really care for other team members and for the development process.
My experience is that one effective way to make people be more careful is to set up your CI server to send an email when (and only when) the status of the build changes, with the "culprit" on the To: list and the rest of the team on the Cc:. I guess you can could call it a "shame factor" ;)
A broken build is anything that doesn't pass the automated test suite.
You're a build breaker. ;) That's not really a big deal as long as you fix it fast. The whole point of a CI environment is to catch bugs, not make people afraid to commit.
My company builds the tip of each branch that is either in production or next up for production. We do this on every commit and each day at 4am. We're using Mercurial, so commit here means pushing changes to the integration repo.
In the spirit of keeping my SVN trunk clean and ready for deployment, I've been utilizing the following source control model. For the impatient, the basic concept is that you create development branches to do actual development, and leave the trunk clean and ready for deployment, at any time (no junk in the trunk).
In addition to this, I am configuring TeamCity for continuous integration. Within TeamCity, I'd like to ensure that all development branches, as well as the deployment-ready branch (the trunk, in my case) build correctly and pass all unit tests.
This might be a stupid question, but not being overly familiar with TeamCity, should I create a new TeamCity project for each branch? The deployment-ready branch, in particular, has a few additional rules than the development branch. For example, releases should be saved in versioned directories on the file system (e.g., C:\Projects\MyProject\1.0.187..., C:\Projects\MyProject\1.0.188...) to enable easy access to the binaries, at any point in time. On the other hands, saving versioned copies of the assemblies in the development branches is not necessary and would waste hard disk space.
Within TeamCity, I'd prefer to see only a single project for each software project. In other words, if my company is working on X number of development projects, I'd prefer to see that project listed only once, not X * 2 (assuming each project has only two branches).
You only need to create a single project, but you will need multiple build configurations - 1 for each branch. As far as I know, you can't customize the artifact folder name on disk (it's an auto-increment number), however you can download all artifacts as a zip file in TeamCity 4.5 from the UI. There is also a scheduler included with TeamCity that lets you cleanup artifacts so they don't consume too much disk space.
TeamCity 2018.1.5
TeamCity doesn't support multi branches for SVN as for GIT - so I solved such problem with Configuration parameter - where I set active branch from which I need to build and after can easily switch to another branch by running a custom build or change that configuration parameter.
After need just configures triggers to start building from a specific branch:
So on project side you can see different branches
And easily switch between branches by running Custom Build and change branch there:
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?