I have a standard way of working for building and deploying my asp .net applications on a build server (usually Jenkins). I have a custom build script and publish profile that builds my solution, copies some files and publishes the web project all with a single call to MSBuild.
I am trying to recreate this in Azure DevOps. My first obstacle seems to be that build and "publish" (or "release" in DevOps parlance) are separate steps. But it also seems like maybe I don't need to "publish"?
So
How do I control what ends up in the "artifacts" folder of the build? Is that through Azure? Can I do it with a .MSBuild file? And
Do I even need the concept of "publish" or does the release step just copy all artifacts to the destination (a VM in this case)? Can I control what gets deployed?
I am having a hard time finding some kind of basic tutorial that cover asp .net projects being deployed this way.
How do I control what ends up in the "artifacts" folder of the build? Is that through Azure? Can I do it with a .MSBuild file?
Yes, we could use the MSBuild Arguments parameter /p:PackageLocation=$(build.artifactstagingdirectory) to control what ends up in the "artifacts" folder.
When we use the task Visual Studio build to build the project, we could edit the MSBuild Arguments parameter to be like: /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:PublishProfile=Test /p:PackageLocation=$(build.artifactstagingdirectory)
Then we could use Publish Build Artifacts task to publish build artifacts to Azure Pipelines, TFS, or a file share.
Do I even need the concept of "publish" or does the release step just copy all artifacts to the destination (a VM in this case)? Can I control what gets deployed?
Yes, you can simply understand the release step just copy artifacts to the destination. If you want to control what gets deployed, you can filter the artifacts when you use the copy task with contents.
Check the article Deploying Web Applications Using Team Build and Release Management for the details.
Hope this helps.
If you have existing scripts that work, just use those :). The new YAML builds are moving slowly away from fully featured UI tasks with lots of logic to more bare bones scripts that do what is needed.
It is a common practice though to split build from publish. That way you can put in additional checks, reviews and approvers on the release stage.
In your case it would mean:
Build stage
Use MsBuild to build & create a publish package either in the form of a folder or a zip file.
Use the Publish Pipeline Artifact task to store this folder or zip file
Release stage
Use the Download Pipeline Artifact task to restore the file to publish
Optionally use a Infra as Code tool to prep the target environment.
Use msdeploy.exe or another tool to publish the package. Optionally generate and pass in a settings file to override certain settings.
This way you can have multiple release stages to generate test environments, temporary POC environments etc by simply using another set of variables and/or settings override file.
There are special tasks in Azure Pipelines that wrap around these tools and provide an easy to use UI and some additional logic. These can be very useful if you don't have intimate knowledge of the commandline tools. If you do know your way around them, there may not be a very strong reason to use the fancy tasks.
Related
I'm doing a web site deployment in azure with bit bucket source.
When I do the deployments I can see always its building the source,
Actually that is not required to me, because it is a Kentico 10 web site (.Net website project).
How do i avoid building while source deployment/ pull the latest from bitbuckt ?
You should stop using continuous integration process in bitbucket and hook your own process to do a xcopy (preferably delta) to target website folder.
Using the OOB tools it is not possible to deploy without a build. So you can do a few things:
FTP
Visual Studio publish
command line copy after a successful build locally.
Another setup could reduce the number of builds you have when deploying but will still build the solution, more branches in Bitbucket.
You could continue to use CI but make sure you hook your environments to proper branches so they only deploy when you perform a merge into that branch.
How do i avoid building while source deployment/ pull the latest from bitbuckt ?
You could check the deployment details under "DEPLOYMENT > Deployment options" as follows:
And you could leverage KUDU and check the auto-generated deploy.cmd file under D:\home\site\deployments\tools\deploy.cmd.
For your requirement, I would recommend you customize your deploy.cmd file, and put .deployment and deploy.cmd files into your Bitbucket repository. For a simple way, you could just download your current deployment script and modify the scripts under the Deployment section, you need to remove the script for building your solution and just leave the script for kudu sync, and you need to modify the value for the -f option from "%DEPLOYMENT_TEMP%" to "%DEPLOYMENT_SOURCE%" when invoking the %KUDU_SYNC_COMMAND%. Details you could follow Custom Deployment Script.
If you want to deploy the full content of your repo with no build or transformation at all, just set SCM_SCRIPT_GENERATOR_ARGS=--basic in the Azure App Settings. This will force the script generator to treat is as a 'basic' site, and won't do any build.
See wiki for more info.
I have done a fair amount of research for publishing and deploying web apps with VSTS and so far I have found the following:
1.Use .pubxml files and pass the DeployOnBuild = True to MSBuildArguments
2.Copy and publish Artifacts and create a separate release definition.
We are currently using the first method, but found that the build can be marked as successful but the publish fails (in our case it was a bad transform)
So we decided to look into separating the publish step and to create a release for our changes.
The issue I am running into is that the copy files and publish artifacts step only copies DLLs and our .js and .html/.css changes don't seem to make it to the UI. As a work around I added these params to the Copy Files method but it is taking a long time to publish. (There are no issues with the release definition)
**\*
!$tf\**
**\!$tf\**
**\!Debug\**
**\*!pdb
All the guides online for using the Publish Artifacts and creating a separate release definition seem to say the same thing, and only push Dlls from the bin folder to the IIS server.
Here is my build definition:
So my question is, why aren't UI changes being deployed to the website when the release completes if this isnt an issue anywhere else?
No, not really. We usually not only publish DLLs and our .js and .html/.css as build artifacts, but for the whole web app.
The Visual Studio Build task usually with the MSBuild Arguments as (if you use ASP.NET build template, it's the default setting):
/p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:WebPublishMethod=Package /p:PackageAsSingleFile=true /p:SkipInvalidConfigurations=true /p:PackageLocation="$(build.artifactstagingdirectory)\\"
In this way, the web app (published files) will be copyed to $(build.artifactstagingdirectory) directly. So you don’t need the Copy Files task.
If you need to deploy all files, you can use ** in Copy Files task.
Then when you deploy the app to IIS server in release definition, the whole web app in build artifacts will be downloaded.
We are currently using Team Foundation Server Build Definitions to build our solution and now I want to add deployment to that. We are using TFS Build servers out of the box for our builds. Currently, we are deploying the web app to our dev integration servers using Web Deploy (MSDeploy) from within VS2010 (Publish on the toolbar). The desire is to move this publish to the build server.
What is the best approach to be able to reuse the MSDeploy mechanism (since it's already in place on IIS) and have the build server take over that task? Can I use MSBuild params or do I need an MSBuild project file? How would I configure the appropriate approach in the Build Definition? It is unclear how to configure a Publish using a Build Definition and MSDeploy.
P.S. I've seen several mentions of MSBuild using MSDeploy with cmd line params, but not in the context of using a Team Explorer Build Definition.
Some links to pages that I've seen, but are incomplete based on my needs:
Creating a Build Definition That Supports Deployment
How to Publish Web with msbuild?
The ALM Rangers' Building Guidance has all the information you are looking for, in particular the chapter "Deployment of Applications and Data Stores".
what is the preferred method of deploying a web project? Just copy the dll's after compiling in release mode and registering them? or using NSIS to build an installer or the MS set up project.
I usually use a Web Deployment Project per WebSite or WebApplication, it allows me to manage build configurations, merging, and define pre-post build MSBuild tasks.
You can also take a look to the Microsoft Web Application Installer, it will be really nice, but it still in beta stage, however you can try it...
This depends greatly on where your webapp is going and the experience you wish to provide.
If you deploy to a web host its best to use xcopy deploy and documentation. If you have a real end system its simpler to create an installer to do all the leg work for your customers and maybe save your self some documentation work.
I would recommend investing in setting up a continuous integration process (CruiseControl.Net or TeamCity etc...) As you are probably not only going to deploy it to your customer only once.
Having an automatic deploy at the push of a button is a Godsend. If you invest a few days you can have automatic deploy to a dev-environment every time someone checks in code (and it compiles and all tests pass), set up daily deploys to a test environment and have a button to automatically deploy it to a staging environment whenever you want.
Andreas, I am in the process of getting CC.Net. In the meanwhile, I am using the Web Deployment Project. Using this and going through the set up, it creates a 'release' folder with a bin folder conntaining dll's and also the aspx in the parent folder.
I assume I can now create an MSI file using the 'release' folder or do i need to do something different to create an MSI which i can run on the client server
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.