I'd like to make it so that a commit to our BitBucket repo (or S3 Bucket) automatically deploys code (using CodeDeploy) to our EC2 instances. I'm not clear what to use for the 'source' and 'destination' entry under the 'files' section in the appspec.yml file and also I am not cleared what to mention in BeforeInstall and AfterInstall under 'Hooks' section. I've found some examples on Google and AWs documentation but I am confused what to mention in above fields. The more I am exploring more I am getting confused.
Consider I am new to AWS Code Deploy.
Also it will be very helpful if someone can provide me step y step link how to configure and how to automate the CodeDeploy.
I was wondering if someone could help me out?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Thanks for using CodeDeploy. For new users, I'd like to recommend the following things to do:
Try to run First Run Wizard on console, it will should you the general process how the deployment goes. It also provide a default deployment bundle, also an appspec file included.
Once you want to try a deployment yourself, the Get Started doc is a great place to help you with some pre-requiste settings like IAM role
Then probably try some tutorials for a sample app too, which gives you some idea about deployment groups, deployment configuration, revision and so on.
The next step should be create a bundle for your own use cases, Appspec file doc would be a great place to refer. And for your concerns about BeforeInstall and AfterInstall, if your application doesn't need to do anything, the lifecycle events can be left as empty. BeforeInstall can be used to for for preinstall tasks, such as decrypting files and creating a backup of the current version, while AfterInstall can be used for tasks such as configuring your application or changing file permissions.
Now it comes to the fun part! This blog talks about details about how to integrate with Github(similar for Bitbucket). It's a little long, but really useful, and it also includes how to do automatically deployment once there is a new pushed commit. Currently Jenkins and CodePipline are really popular for auto-triggered deplyoments, but there are always a lot of other ways can achieve the same purpose like Lamda and so on
Related
I'm new to codedeploy. I managed to make a deployment to an ec2 instance successfully (and using git to manage code so everything works beautifully now).
I want some other people besides myself working in the project to be able to deploy source code to the instance but not be able to run a script (especially because codedeploy seems to be running as root). Think of it as an admin/webmaster scenario.
In other words, appspec.yml has the "hooks" section under it and you can run any scripts as part of the deployment. I want to prevent this, the instance has all the software ready for the deployment so won't be needing this.
2 questions:
1) Does this make sense or am I grossly misunderstanding something/am I overkilling by using codedeploy altogether?
2) If it makes sense, how can I achieve this?
This doesn't seem to be something that CodeDeploy is able to do at this moment. But do you want to disable the auto deploy from Github to CodeDeploy? And if anyone else push a code change, it'll exist on Github. When you are ok with the changes, you can do a manually deployment from Github on CodeDeploy console.
I searched and tried a couple of tutorials on the internet but none of them worked for me well.
The tutorials I followed were from Symfony2 documentation, Dator, Hpatoio and Capifony.
Can somebody explain to me how I can export my project into my server. E.g. www.domain.com/about.
It would be very helpful to me.
I have a bundle and inside the bundles all controller and twig templates etc are set.
If you have any questions please ask.
Thanks in advance.
First off it should be noted that deploying a Symfony2 app over FTP is really really bad. It makes a couple of steps more difficult (or even impossible) and should be avoided. If you have SSH access to the machine look at my list of alternative deployment methods below.
Preparation
There are a few things you cannot influence when you deploy over FTP. If you have no control over the following or can not configure them correctly you unfortunately have no chance of deploying to a shared hosting.
The PHP configuration. If settings are not set correctly and you have no chance of changing them you are unfortunately lost.
Any PHP module you may require. Same as above. If you can not install any additional modules you need there is no chance for you. (An example for that would be the php5-intl module for any Symfony <2.6)
Correct folder permissions. Especially for app/cache and app/logs. Check the docs for requirements.
The Webserver configuration. Symfony needs a correctly configured Webserver (in most cases probably apache or nginx) to function correctly. If you can not influence the config this is bad as well. You might want to try to define the rewrite rules in a .htaccess file as described here.
Deployment
Here are the steps you need to follow to prepare your application for deployment for the first time:
Update / Install vendors. Use composer install (or composer update) to install any third party bundle or library you use in your project since you have no option to install them later directly on the server.
If you use Assetic for your asset management, make sure you install these as well with the php app/console assetic:dump --env=prod command.
Dump any other assets like so: php app/console assets:install --env=prod. (This step might not be required but you need to make sure the assets are not symlinked. Check this blog post if you are using symfony >=2.6)
Clear the cache for production: php app/console cache:clear --env=prod
Make sure you edit your parameters.yml to fit the needs of your production server.
Also update your database schema on your production database in case you have changed it during development.
Now you should be good to go. Copy the whole folder onto your server and try it out.
For the future
If you deploy for the second time make sure not to override any user data (e.g. uploaded images). Also you need to clear the cache over ftp. To do that empty the app/cache directory.
Alternative deployment methods
In case you have more access to the server check out any of these. They might fit your needs better than old pure FTP. Maybe they give you reason enough to change to a more appropriate server. Capifony is probably one of the best deployment tools for Symfony2 apps. Deployment will be as easy as running cap deploy on your local machine. The rest is magic ;) Simple git is also possible for deployment. Many of the above steps will still apply but you have all the advantages git gives you like not copying everything every time you deploy. A very good list of all tools can be found in the docs.
It might help if you tell us a little more about your server set up, but here's a fairly generic guide:
Assuming you want to upload it using ftp (since you tagged the question as such), you will need an FTP
client (see here for some suggestions).
Using the FTP client, you'll want to connect to your server
(hostname: yoursite.com) using your credentials (if it is a secured
server).
From there, you should be able to upload any files from your local
machine to the server.
More specific directions will depend on your server configuration and the FTP client you choose (it should come with its own manual)
I'm trying to set up a deployment chain for some of our ASP.NET applications. The tool of choice is Web Deploy (msdeploy) - for now. Unfortunately I'm stuck on a problem.
A high level overview of the chain is thus:
Web developer creates the code and checks it in SVN;
Buildserver sees the update and builds the msdeploy .zip package of the website;
The .zip package is automatically put inside our installer and sent to various clients;
The clients run the installer on their webserver(-s);
The installer uses msdeploy internally to deploy the .zip package and create a new website or upgrade an existing one.
Msdeploy makes it easy to deploy a new instance, but I'm stumped about how to perform an "upgrade" install. The main problem is the web.config file. Each client will most certainly have made some customizations there to suit their specific environment. The installer itself offers to set some more critical parameters at the first-time installation (achieved by msdeploy's parameter mechanism), but they can do others by hand.
On the other hand, we developers also occasionally make changes to web.config, adding some new settings or removing obsolete ones. So I can't just tell msdeploy to ignore the file entirely. I need some kind of advanced XML modification mechanism. It could be a script that the developers maintain, but then it needs to be run ONLY at upgrades, not new installs.
I've no idea how to accomplish this.
Besides that, sometimes there's also some completely weird upgrade logic. For example, the application comes with our company logo, but some clients have replaced that .png file to show their own logo. Recently we needed to update the logo - but only for clients that hadn't replaced it with their own.
Similarly, there might be some cache folders that might need to be cleaned at SOME upgrades but not at others. Or folders with user content that may not be touched (but come with default content at the initial installation). Etc.
How do you normally achieve this dual behavior for msdeploy packages? Do I really need to create 2 distinct packages for every application?
Suggestion from personal experience:
Isolate customisations
Your customers should have the ability to customise their set up and the best way is to provide them with something like an override file. That way you install the new package and follow by superimposing your customer's customisations on top of your standard setup. If its a brand new install then there will be nothing to superimpose.
> top-level --
> standard files |
images | This will never be touched or changed by customer
settings.txt |
__
> customer files --
images | Customer hacks this to their heart's content
settings.txt_override |
--
Yes, this does mean that some kind of merging process needs to happen and there needs to be some script that does that but this approach has several advantages.
For settings that suddenly become redundant just issue a warning to that effect
If a customer has their own logo provide the ability to specify this in the override file
The message is clear to customers. Stay off standard files.
If customers request more customisable settings then write the default if it does not exist into the override file during upgrades.
Vilx, in answer to your question, the logic for knowing whether it is an upgrade or not must be contained in the script itself.
To run an upgrade script before installation
msdeploy -verb:sync -source:contentPath="C:\Test1" -dest:contentPath="C:\Test2" -preSync:runcommand="c:\UpgradeScript.bat"
Or to run an upgrade script after installation
msdeploy -verb:sync -source:contentPath="C:\Test1" -dest:contentPath="C:\Test2" -postSync:runcommand="c:\UpgradeScript.bat"
More info here
As to how you know its an upgrade your script could check for a text file called "version.txt" and if it exists the upgrade bat script will run. Version to be contained within the text file. Bit basic but it should work.
This also has the added advantage of giving you the ability of more elegantly merging customer's custom settings between versions as you know which properties could be overriden for that particular version.
There are some general suggestions (not specific to msdeploy), but I hope that helps:
I think you'll need to provide several installers anyway: for the initial setup and for each version-to-version upgrade.
I would suggest to let your clients to merge the config files themselves. You could just provide them either detailed desciption of waht was added/changed/removed, and/or include the utility that simplifies the merge. Maybe this and this links will give you some pointers.
as for merging the replaced logos, other client's customization, I think the best approach would be to support branding your application. I mean - move all branding details to the place where your new/upgrade installers won't touch that.
as for the rest of the adjustments made by your clients, they do that on their own risk, so the only help you could provide them is to include the detailed list of changes (maybe even the list of changed files since the previous version) and the How-To article about merging the sources with tools like Araxis Merge or similar
Or.. you could create a utility and include it to the installer, which will try to do all the tricky merging stuff on client's machine. I would not recommend this way as it requires a lot of efforts/resources to maintain.
One more thing: you could focus on backup-ing the previous client copy before upgrade. So even client will have troubles with upgrading - that will be always possible to roll back. The only thing here for you is to provide a good feedback channel which your clients can use to shoot their troubles. This feedback will allow you to figure out what the troubles your clients have and how to make their upgrade process more comfortable.
I would build on what the above have said, but I would do it with transformations, and strict documentation about who configures what. The way you have it now relies on customer intervention against a config that is mission critical to the app deploy process.
Create three config file areas. One for development, one for the "production generic" build, and one that is an empty template for the customer to edit.
The development instance should be self explanatory. This is the transform that takes the production generic template and creates a web config for your development server. (it sounds like you are shooting for a CI type process here)
The "production generic" transform should set the app up for a hypothetically perfect instance of the app. This is what the install would look like if the architect had his way.
The customer transform is used by the customers to set up the web config as required to meet their own needs. Write some documentation and see what happens. Edit the docs as you help customers through the process.
It that what you were looking for? Thoughts?
Here is what I am trying to do: I have my code sitting on Bitbucket (it is a ASP.net web application). I want to put together a build machine that has a web-based dashboard. I go to the dashboard and I say: Ok show me all the branches and stuff on my Bitbucket project. Now please get the latest code from this branch for me and build it. Then please deploy it to this location for me or maybe this other location. I want this dashboard give me a history of all this builds and deployments too. I am very new to this concept I have been reading about CC.net and MSBuild and other stuff but I can not find the right answer. Please put me in the right direction.
The point of a build server is that it automatically runs a build each time you commit something to your repository.
In order for the build server to know exactly what to do, you normally put a build script (with MSBuild or NAnt) into your solution which does everything you want - building your solution, maybe create a setup package and so on.
The build server basically knows where the repository is and where in the repository your build script is.
You need to configure this once in the build server, and then it will always run after you commit (but you can also start a build manually, if you want).
If you want a solution with web-based dashboard, try TeamCity.
It's a commercial product, but it's free for up to 20 users.
You can do everything in the web interface - configuration, running the builds AND browsing the build history.
EDIT:
Houda, concerning your question about deployment:
I don't think that TeamCity has a "deployment mode" in that sense. What you could do is include the deployment stuff in your build script that is run by TeamCity.
So, after the build itself is finished, copy the generated assemblies and files on your web server(s).
If you do it this way, you HAVE to make sure in the build script that the deployment will only happen if the build didn't fail (and if you have unit tests, if the unit tests didn't fail as well).
This is very important for a live application, because if you don't take care of this well enough, your app will go immediately offline every time someone commits "bad" code to your repository (and it will stay offline until the next "good" commit)!!
EDIT 2:
See Lasse V. Karlsen's comment below: it's more comfortable with the new TeamCity version 6.
For an ASP.NET web application that is packaged and sold to customers for deployment, what would be the best location for a "read me" file with notes about setup and configuration on the target system?
Requirements:
The file should not be accessible by
users of the web application, only
the person doing setup and
configuration.
The file should be
consumable by the MSI installer
program, so that it can be displayed
as part of the setup wizard UI.
The solution should be simple and very
low cost. (I don't want an elaborate
solution for just a simple text
file.)
Some thoughts I have are to copy the file to *App_Data* or to bin as those are protected folders by default, and then pull the file in from one of those locations in the setup program.
The readme should be a separate file that sits beside the MSI on the media you distribute the web app on. This is a standard practice dating from generations ago the dark ages. If you distribute as a download from the web then have a link for the MSI, and a link for the readme.
You could also include the same file into the MSI, but arguably that is the wrong place for it as the user has yet to reach the configuration stage, and unless they print it they won't be able to refer to it later in the MSI process (if you have any configuration steps in the MSI).
Having the instructions available via the web app is also arguably wrong, as the user may have to do some initial configuration in order to reach the page telling them how to configure the app....
So ship the instructions separately to the MSI, and make sure they look okay and are easily readable when printed out. Remember these pointers:
Instructions are not always read
Instructions are not always read at the time of installation
Instructions are not always read by the same person that does the installation
Instructions are not always read from the screen
Instructions are not always read correctly, even when they are simple
Instructions are not always read (I know that is a duplicate of the first point...)
Don't forget to clearly distinguish between pre-install and post-install configuration instructions (even if they are in the same document) - you want to minimize the risk of the end user getting it wrong (which some of them will do no matter how hard you try).
Build the important message into your application. Do it like Apache where it says "this is a new installation of...." and don't allow that screen to go away until they go in and do all the things that you consider important.
This isn't a problem for your installer to solve.