We have a number of .NET core console applications all sharing some small internal libraries. We would like to publish them as a single bundle with all internal libraries to a single XCOPYable folder. Microsoft currently has no solution for this (see https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/publishing-multiple-net-core-applications-in-a-sin/1152838). I am wondering if someone has a pointer to how we might be able achieve this until there is a solution from Microsoft.
I ended up writing a PowerShell script that
built the apps
recursively copied all the publishable contents to a temporary staging folder
compressed the staging folder for deployment
deleted the staging folder
cleaned up build
Solves my problem. But if there is a better way out there, please let me know.
Related
I am trying to create a web app using ASP.NET core, d3.js and jquery. I hired someone on upwork to create the app. He was able to get it working on my local machine by adding libraries d3, jquery, and others under wwwroot/lib. However, on the remote github repository, these libraries are not included. I have seen others on stackoverflow also not include the libraries when pushing to remote and was wondering why this is the case.
I would like to publish my app using Azure, but when I do this I get an error and I believe it's because the libraries are missing. I know that I can just add the libraries to the remote repository, but I don't think this is the correct method. how are the libraries added with MS Azure?
You can add this to a inside your .csproj file to enforce copying NuGet assemblies to the built output:
<CopyLocalLockFileAssemblies>true</CopyLocalLockFileAssemblies>
However, note that the build output (bin/Release/netcoreapp*/*) is not supposed to be portable and distributable, the output of dotnet publish is. As you have said, you get work in local, so copy the assemblies to the build output is probably very useful when the app is upload to azure.
For more details, you could refer to this SO thread.
So I'm using visual studio 2010 to build a website that was formerly running on PHP, so I'm pretty new to the environment.
In starting the project I built a website project, not a web application project. I know that will probably generate a lot of "never use a website project, use a web application project instead" comments, but bear with me.
I'm attempting to provide our server team with the necessary files to compile on our server for the first time. However they're used to working with web application files, not website files.
Normally they are given the source code and a batch file that compiles the code into deployment directories and then they just move the files to the server from there. I'm pretty sure that the other teams use deployment packages to do this, which obviously isn't an option for a website.
My question is, what would be the equivalent steps for getting the source for a website ready to deploy vs a web application? I have published the website to a separate folder and this has rendered what I think is the equivalent in many ways, but I wanted to make sure.
Also, is it possible to publish certain parts of a website without others?
Please with-hold all the comments about how I should be using a web application instead, google seems to assume that's all that's used out there too.
Thanks!
There isn't much to deploying a web site other than copying the source files to a directory in IIS. It will compile the site automatically on the first page request.
I agree with Britton. I personally prefer web application but with the web site project you have 2 options.
Either a) Upload all the files (including the .vb or .cs files) and the web server will compile on the fly. OR, you can publish to a separate folder locally on your machine, and then upload that folder. I would do the publish if you don't want anyone seeing your source code.
The problem is, that when I commit project directory, there is uploaded everything including source code.
Not really sure why you want to upload via FTP? You shouldn't commit your own compiled binaries to source control for deployment though.
You could take a look at AppHarbor, just push your code with git and it will be build and deployed automatically.
more about AppHarbor
Real alternatives to Windows Azure PaaS (web role)?
Does it matter? Since asp.net pages can be compiled on the server, having source files on the web server is sometimes normal so IIS knows not to allow access to them.
That said, uploading output binaries into source control is generally a bad idea - it is better to do the deployment from your build server.
Actually, this is kind of hard.
For months, I've tried to automatize our deployment, without absolute success. For my experience, I can see only way to do that:
Have a build server on your deployment machine (or same network)
A build server will pull out your code from repository, say, once per minute and will check for modifications. If there's modifications, it will execute the build scripts related to this project. I suggest you to use TeamCity, because it is very easy to use compared to CruiseControl (I'm not sure if you can use Git with TFS). You can program your build server for build your solution or project and after, you can execute an msbuild script to copy the files to the production folder (e.g: c:\inetpub\yourapp or \\my_server\inetpub\yourapp). You can use MSBuild's Copy Task to do that.
UPDATE 1: I didn't tried, but if helps, you can push to an FTP server using git-ftp
UPDATE 2: Seems that some guy did some workarounds and successfully deployed his app using git and FTP.
I know you can copy a Website intact to the server and have it run normally (security and compilation time aside).
What about the projects that are in the solution? [whose dll's are copied to the bin when built]. Is there a way to copy the projects' code files to the server as well?
My goal is to be able to debug [by modifying code in the project if needed] directly on the server without having to install an IDE [or keep building on dev machine and copying over dlls]. I can debug/modify the website files, but not the projects.
EDIT: to clarify, not just debug, but be able to edit.
So long as you upload both the DLLs and the PDBs, you should be able to debug successfully without the raw projects on the server. It can be augmented if you have open the matching project / solutions locally. There really isn't a requirement to upload solution, project, or raw code files to the server to debug effectively, remotely. It should be noted that breakig while debugging will hang the app domain on the target application, and as such, should be done with caution in a multiuser environment.
You do not need the project files in order to debug files.
You should read about remote debugging.
Update:
What you want to do sounds very dangerous in a production environment. If you want to develop, develop locally.
Regardless - project and solution files are organizational tools in visual studio as well as build files for the MSBuild build tool. If you don't have either visual studio or MSBuild installed on the server, there is little point in having the project and solution files on it.
Why do you need to develop on a production machine?
When I build my ASP.NET web application I get a .dll file with the code for the website in it (which is great) but the website also needs all the .aspx files and friends, and these need to be placed in the correct directory structure. How can I get this all in one directory as the result of each build? Trying to pick the right files out of the source directory is a pain.
The end result should be xcopy deployable.
Update: I don't want to have to manually use the Publish command which I'm aware of. I want the full set of files required by the application to be the build output - this means I also get the full set of files in one place from running MSBuild.
One solution appears to be Web Deployment Projects (WDPs), an add-on for Visual Studio (and msbuild) available that builds a web project to a directory and can optionally merge assemblies and alter the web.config file. The output of building a WDP is all the files necessary to deploy the site in one directory.
More information about Web Deployment Projects:
Announcement on webdevtools MSDN blog for WDP 2008
ScottGu introduction to WDP 2005
The only disadvantage to this solution is the requirement on an add-on which must be available on the build machine. Still, it's good enough for now!
ASP.NET doesn't have real xcopy deployment for new sites. It depends on having a virtual directory/Application in IIS. However, once that virtual directory is created you can use xcopy for updates.
You can Publish Web site..If you want to automate your deployment, you need to use some script.
Have you tried using the aspnet_compiler.exe in your .net framework directory? I'm pretty sure you can create a "deploy ready" version of a web application or web site.
The _CopyWebApplication target on MSBuild will do exactly what you need. The catch is that only the main assembly will be copied to the bin folder and that's why a copy task is needed to also copy any other file on the bin folder.
I was trying to post the sample script as part of this post but wasn't able to.
Please take a look at this article on my blog that describes how to create a MSBuild script similar to the one you need.
Have you tried right clicking the website in Solution Explorer and clicking 'Publish Website'?
Build --> Publish
A dialog box will appear that will guide you through the process.
For the automated building you describe in the update, I would recommend you look into MSBuild and CruiseControl.NET
It depends on how complicated solution you need, you could just use a script and jenkins for example. You can use MSBUild with Jenkins for just deploying to an IIS. And if you got Jenkins other tools is pretty easy to connect into it later on. But if you just want to build, use a script that jenins execute every build that uses MSDeploy and it will work great.
This is how i do it, just to give you a feeling:
Sonarqube uses Gallio, Gendarme, FXcop, Stylecop, NDepths and PartCover to get your metrics and all this is pretty straight forward since SonarQube do this automatically without much configuration.
Here is Jenkins witch builds and get Sonar metrics and a another job for deploying automatically to IIS. I use a simple script one line that calls my MSBuild and wich URL, pass and user.
And Sonarqube, all metrics for my project. This is a simple MVC4 app, but it works great!:
If you want more information can i provide you with a good guide.
This whole setup uses MSBuild, too build and deploy the apps.