MSBuild project deploy to local folder with config transformed - deployment

I'm having trouble trying to find the right way to use MSBuild to build a web project and output the project with only deployable files (i.e. no .cs, .csproj, .Debug.config etc.), but published to a local folder that I can then FTP, RoboCopy, (or whatever) to a secondary location.
The published output must have the Web.config file pre-transformed as per the specified configuration and the transformation config files (e.g. Web.Debug.config) not included in the output. I don't need any fancy publishing to IIS, database deployment or anything like that, I just want clean file system output that I can then test. Note that this cannot be done using visual tools as I want to run it as part of an automated build process.
I can generate a web deployment package, but I can't get WebDeploy to work because it doesn't seem to handle quoted command line options anymore (seems to be some kind of bug) and the directory structure has spaces, so I was hoping to accomplish the whole task using MSBuild, seeing as MSBuild seems to have native capacity to transform the config file (TransformXml), which is the only real bit of proper deployment functionality I'd be using.

Got it figured out eventually. The following build script does the trick:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<UsingTask TaskName="TransformXml" AssemblyFile="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.Tasks.dll"/>
<PropertyGroup>
<OutputDir>obj\website-output</OutputDir>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="PrepareDeploy">
<ItemGroup>
<DeployableFiles Include="App_Code/**/*.*;App_Data/**/*.*;Areas/**/Views/**/*.*;bin/**/*.*;Views/**/*.*;*.aspx;*.asax;*.html;*.htm;sitemap.xml;*.ico;*.png" Exclude="App_Data/**/*.log" />
</ItemGroup>
<RemoveDir ContinueOnError="true" Directories="$(OutputDir)" />
<MSBuild Projects="Website.csproj" />
<MakeDir ContinueOnError="true" Directories="$(OutputDir)" />
<Copy SourceFiles="#(DeployableFiles)" DestinationFiles="#(DeployableFiles->'$(OutputDir)\%(RelativeDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" />
<TransformXml Source="Web.config" Transform="Web.$(Configuration).config" Destination="$(OutputDir)\web.config" />
</Target>
</Project>

Related

Nuget packages bundled in teamcity not installing documentation files

So basically I am building nuget packages in TeamCity via a .proj file that runs a "pack" target:
<MSBuild
Projects="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\PROJNAME.csproj"
Targets="Rebuild;pack"
Properties="Configuration=$(Configuration);Version=$(BUILD_NUMBER)" />
With an artifact output of:
PROJNAME\bin\Release\PROJNAME.%build.number%.nupkg
This works nicely for basic consuming of the nuget package, however I am having trouble getting the documentation xml files to work.
I have looked inside the output nupkg and I see that the documentation xml is actually bundled and included in the package, however the problem is that when I finally restore nuget packages in my consuming project, the dll gets copied across as expected, however the documentation does not.
I wondered if this is because of the TC generated .nuspec file, and if I may need to abandon teamcities nuspec and create my own, however I was hoping to avoid this, given it works nicely the way it is, and handles versioning etc.
Is there a simple way to include documentation xml when the package is restored?
In the end i found it came down to 3 things, being:
Ensure projects configuration is set to generate documentation.
Either by adding code manually such as:
<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)'=='Release|AnyCPU'"><DocumentationFile>bin\$(Configuration)\netstandard2.0\Project.documentation.xml</DocumentationFile>
</PropertyGroup>
<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)'=='Debug|AnyCPU'"> <DocumentationFile>bin\$(Configuration)\netstandard2.0\Project.documentation.xml</DocumentationFile>
</PropertyGroup>
Or alternatively via the Visual Studio Project properties menu, if you are doing it through VS also make sure you do it for all configurations (as depicted as A in the picture below):
Add EnableDocumentationFile to your .csproj file, eg:
<PropertyGroup>
<TargetFramework>netstandard2.0</TargetFramework>
<RootNamespace>project</RootNamespace>
<Configurations>Debug;Release</Configurations>
<EnableDocumentationFile>true</EnableDocumentationFile>
</PropertyGroup>
and most importantly let your project know (again in your .csproj) that it should be copying over the documentation file, and use PackageFlatten if you want it to appear at the same level as your package dll:
<ItemGroup>
<None Remove="bin\$(Configuration)\netstandard2.0\Project.documentation.xml" />
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<Content Include="bin\$(Configuration)\netstandard2.0\Project.documentation.xml">
<Pack>true</Pack>
<PackageCopyToOutput>true</PackageCopyToOutput>
<PackageFlatten>true</PackageFlatten>
</Content>
</ItemGroup>

How do you upgrade the *.props included in a NuGet package?

I'm working on an internal NuGet package that adds a pre-build event.
It does this by specifying a build folder containing a MyPackage.props file per the documentation.
Here is the contents of the props file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="12.0" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<PropertyGroup>
<PreBuildEvent>Some commands go here</PreBuildEvent>
</PropertyGroup>
</Project>
If the project has never had a pre-build event, the event is created. However, if there is an existing PerBuildEvent element in the csproj file, the new value does not get populated. I can get it to work if I open up the csproj file and manually delete the appropriate PropertyGroupElement:
<PropertyGroup>
<PreBuildEvent>Some command line stuff</PreBuildEvent>
</PropertyGroup>
However, I have to delete if from there, as just deleting the contents of the pre-build event in the UI does not allow the new value to be written.
I want to use the convention based method over doing this in install.ps1 because the documentation specifies:
[NuGet 3.x] This script will not be executed in projects managed by project.json
...and (I left this part out before) is there a way to do this when there is no csproj file?
What's going on?
I would suggest you do not use a prebuild event in your .props since I would expect that you do not want to overwrite an existing one in the project.
Instead you could look at using another target so that your logic runs before the build by using the BeforeTargets:
<Target Name="MyBeforeBuild" BeforeTargets="Build">
<Message Text="### MyBeforeBuild ###" Importance="high" />
</Target>
You may also want to look at using the DependsOnTargets attribute if you need your pre-build event to run after some other target.
<Target Name="MyTarget" DependsOnTargets="$(CoreCompileDependsOn)">
</Target>

How do I deploy XULRunner folder to output directory after installing abcpdf gecko via nuget?

I installed the ABCpdf.ABCGecko package via nuget, and it gave me this dialog:
Finished! Please deploy the XULRunner folder to your output directory manually.
I don't really know wtf this means... I have an idea, but don't know precisely where or how to modify my build configuration to allow this to occur. Has anyone done this, and if so, how?
My original attempted answer worked fine for my development setup, but didn't work on our staged deployment setup, as for some reason it didn't include the XULRunner files inside the web package created using MSDeploy. I've found what seems to be a simpler setup, below:
<ItemGroup>
<Content Include="XULRunner\**\*.*">
<CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
</Content>
</ItemGroup>
I'm not 100% sure if this works universally, but it seems to work better in every development and deployment scheme I've encountered thus far.
I found how to accomplish this via this SO answer. The relevant changes to the project's .csproj file are below:
<Target Name="AfterBuild">
<CallTarget Targets="CopyXULRunnerToDeployFolder" />
</Target>
<Target Name="CopyXULRunnerToDeployFolder">
<ItemGroup>
<MyFiles Include="XULRunner\**\*.*" />
</ItemGroup>
<Microsoft.Build.Tasks.Copy SourceFiles="#(MyFiles)" DestinationFiles="#(MyFiles->'$(OutputPath)\XULRunner\%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)')"/>
</Target>

How to create MSBuild targets file to deploy files?

Given I have a post build process that generates files in \bin\out how can I use a MSBuild targets file to state that all files (recursively) in that directory should be published during web deploy?
Let's split this in two parts:
First, build the web project:
<Target Name="BuildWeb">
<MSBuild Projects="WebExtranet\WebExtranet.csproj"
Properties="Configuration=$(Environment);DeployOnBuild=True;CreatePackageOnPublish=True;BaseIntermediateOutputPath=..\$(DistDir)\Web\" />
</Target>
Then use this to publish to the local IIS (you might need to adjust the msdeploy command to suit your needs)
<Target Name="DeployWeb">
<ItemGroup>
<PackageSourceDir Include='$(DistDir)\Web\$(Environment)\Package\WebExtranet.zip' />
</ItemGroup>
<Message Text="Package path: %(PackageSourceDir.FullPath)" />
<Exec Command=""c:\Program Files\IIS\Microsoft Web Deploy V3\msdeploy.exe" -verb:sync -allowUntrusted -source:package="%(PackageSourceDir.FullPath)" -setParam:'IIS Web Application Name'='My Web App' -dest:auto"/>
</Target>
Common pitfalls:
The msbuild version is important. I'm using V3.
You have to have the web application already created on IIS. Only need to do it once.
Note that the $(Environment) variable is the build configuration. I have several, but run the first target and check the folder structure created. Then adjust the script.

MSBuild: OutputPath directory is empty

I want to deploy my ASP.NET MVC site and have the following script.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project DefaultTargets="Build" ToolsVersion="4" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<Import Project="..\MyProjName\MyProjName.csproj"/>
<PropertyGroup>
<NewInstallDir>C:\DeployFolder\</NewInstallDir>
<BinDir>$(NewInstallDir)bin\</BinDir>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="Build">
<MSBuild Projects="..\MySlnName.sln"
Properties="Configuration=Release;Platform=Any CPU;OutputPath=$(BinDir)" />
<Copy SourceFiles="#(Content->'..\MyProjName\%(RelativeDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)')"
DestinationFiles="#(Content->'$(NewInstallDir)%(RelativeDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)')" />
<Copy SourceFiles="#(None->'..\MyProjName\%(RelativeDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)')"
DestinationFiles="#(None->'$(NewInstallDir)%(RelativeDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)')" />
<MakeDir Directories="#(Folder->'$(NewInstallDir)%(RelativeDir)')" />
</Target>
</Project>
Main idea.
I copied binary to C:\DeployFolder (take structure of folder from sources). I build my dll to C:\DeployFolder\Bin (I don't have this folder in sources folder so I need separately copy this).
I run my script - all works instead of copy DLLs to OutputPath. Same scripts works for other asp.net mvc project. I have no idea what is wrong in this case.
I complete this issue with workaround but I would like to know what is wrong with this script.
The first thing I'd try is to replace your use of the deprecated $(OutputPath) with $(OutDir). From when I've seen this error, 9 times out of 10 it is due to a mismatch between the Platform/Configuration requested and how a particular project is actually defined. Take care to keep track of the discrepency between "Any CPU" (with a space) preferred by solution files and "AnyCPU" actually used inside project files for $(Platform). Some project wizards only set up an "x86" Platform or otherwise omit "AnyCPU" which can cause the OutputPath to be empty.
Beyond that, the approach of importing a project file and then building a solution (presumbably that includes the very same project" is a bit off center. Consider making the deployment changes you desire within the project file itself, through an import. You can either wire into the existing build targets at the right place, or perhaps add an additional target.