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".
Related
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.
I have ASP.NET MVC web application. I need to deploy it which consists of:
1. Changing some of Web.config sections
2. Building under Release configuration
3. Copying to my deployment server (optional)
What are the ways to automate this process?
1. Changing some of Web.config sections
Use the web.config transformation you can implemnt it by modifing the Web.Debug.config and Web.Release.config in your web project
2. Building under Release configuration
3. Copying to my deployment server (optional)
This post should help. Read also this about the publish thing
We use continuous integration via Jenkins/Hudson to build and a task in it to deploy to staging or production that uses msdeploy in a batch script.
For building, our parameters for msbuild for release builds are:
/Target:Clean;Build /Property:Configuration=Release
It does take a while to figure out the msdeploy options but it is worth looking into (it's what Visual Studio is using behind the scenes to do the deploy if you use the GUI-based approach).
In terms of building under release configuration & copying to your deployment server you can use MS-Build alongside a tool like Team City / Team Build to automate the process.
Here is a great post to get yourself up and running: How to use MSBuild to deploy an ASP.NET MVC application
I am looking for the most straight forward way to automate the deploy of an MVC 3 application. There is a wealth of information on Stack Overflow already, but much of it seems to be old, and I am not sure what is still relevant to MVC 3.
Here is what I am trying to achieve:
Publish MVC application
Zip files
Copy zip to remote location
It is the “Publish” part of this I am having the most trouble with. Here are my main points of confusion:
How can an automated build be initiated for an MVC 3 app? Do we need to use the AspNetComiler MSBuild Task? I have seen an example of this uses in conjunction with a CSC Task. Are both really needed?
There is a “Build Deployment Package” option in Visual Studio. Can this be initiated with MSBuild? Should this be used instead?
Web Deployment Projects: where do these fit into the picture?
Thanks for any help
I am by far not specialist in application deployment so there might be better ways but here's what I do.
I use Web Deployment Projects to precompile my ASP.NET MVC 3 application
I feed the result of this project to a Setup and Deployment Project
I wrote a custom assembly which is applied to this Setup and Deplyment Project as an Install step and which based on the target IIS version creates App Pool and Virtual Directories.
I ship an MSI to the team responsible for deploying the application. All they need to do is to schedule a task which does an msiexec /u myapp.msi and then msiexec /i myapp.msi.
Remark : in my case all builds are automated in a continuous integration fashion with a Team Foundation Server Build but if you don't have a build server you could also build it manually by running the setup and deployment project which spits an MSI.
Which is the best method to deploy a web application. Currently i am publishing the application and placing that folder in the server and creating virtual directory and providing windows authentication.
I just want to know this is a better metod to deploy or i need to use any other deployment technique?
Plese suggest
It really depends on the situation. For some situations, using Visual Studio's publish feature (right click project) works great. However in some situations, particular larger organizations or environments where the infrastructure group and development team are a little more isolated, you need to use a Web Application Installer or an MSI package. I've also had instances where the easiest thing to do was create a simple .bat file and create an external command in Visual Studio.
Use a web application installer, easy to create with Visual Studio.
If you need a third person to deploy your application in production servers, I would suggest you to deploy using a MSI, it would also help you to version your release.
MSI can be created using various ways including but not limited to
Deployment projects in VS studio
WixGen
Click once
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.