I am looking for a way to automatically create a branch or similar (in TFS) when I publish a web application to our production server.
We do all our work in the DEV branch and when it is ready for release we then publish the site to the web server. What I am after is a snapshot of the code that is currently running on our production server.
I realise that I could manually create a branch or label but am looking for a way to automate this. I am looking to make the publishing procedure as simple as possible since we tend to publish frequently.
We do not have a release schedule but rather release whenever changes are completed and tested.
Thanks in advance.
Here is an example where I modified the TFS build process to automatically create a branch and check the code into it. Let me know if you have any questions.
http://www.codesmartnothard.com/2009/07/02/HowToBranchWithinInATFSBuild.aspx
Related
I am working on a ASP.net MVC4 project where a same project needs to be deployed to many clients on daily basis, each client will have its own domain / sub domain and a separate app pool and db (MSSSQL).
Doing each deployment manually could take at least 1-2 hours if everything goes well. Is there anyway using which I can do this in some automated way?
Moreover, we also need to update all of the apps when a new version is released.. may be one by one or all of them at same time. However, doing this manually could take weeks and once we have more clients then it will not possible doing this update manually.
The update involves, suspending app for some time, taking a full backup of files and db, update application code/ files in app folder, upgrade db with a script and then start app, doing some diagnosis script to check if update was successful or not, if not we need to check what went wrong?
How can we automate this updates? Any idea would be great on how to approach this issue.
As a developer for BuildMaster, I can say that this scenario, known as the "Core Version" pattern, is a common one. If you're OK with a paid solution, you can setup your deployment plans within the tool that do exactly what you described.
As a more concrete example, we experience this exact situation in a slightly different way. BuildMaster has a set of 60+ extensions that rely on a specific SDK version. In our recent 4.0 release, we had to re-deploy every extension because of breaking API changes within the SDK. This is essentially equivalent to having a bunch of customers and deploying to them all at once. We have set up our deployment plans such that any time we create a new release of the SDK application, we have the option to set a variable that says to build every extension that relies on the SDK:
In BuildMaster, the idea is to promote a build (i.e. an immutable object that travels through various environments like Dev, Test, Staging, Prod) to its final environment (where it becomes the deployed build for the release). In your case, this would be pushing your MVC application to its final environment, and that would then trigger the deployments of all dependent applications (i.e. your customers' instances of your application). For our SDK, the plan looks like this:
For your scenario, you would only need the single action, "Promote Build". As I mentioned before, any dependents would then be promoted to their final environments, so all your customer deployments would kick off once that action is run during deployment. As an example, our Azure extension's deployment plan for its final environment looks like this (internal URLs redacted):
You may have noticed that these plans are marked "Shared", which means every extension we have has the exact same deployment plan, but utilizes different variables to handle the minor differences like names, paths, etc.
Since this is such an enormous topic I could go on for ages, but I think that should be sufficient for your use-case if you wanted to try it out.
There are others but you could setup Team Server Foundation to deploy automated builds.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff650529.aspx
I find the easiest way to do this from an MVC project is to create a publish profile.
This is done by right-clicking your project selecting publish and then configuring it to your needs.
Then from TFS you create a new build definition, this kicks of a wizard which takes you through it.
There are quite a few options which would be too long to go into for every scenario.
The main change I usually find the most important is to set an MSBuild Argument to deploy with the publish profile.
This can be found at Process > Advanced > MSBuild Arguments.
Once this is configured correctly it's a simple case of right-clicking and queue new build to build and deploy.
You wil need different PublishProfile/Build configuration per deployment environment.
For backups I use a powershell script which can be called manually or from TFS.
You also have a drop folder in TFS which keeps a backup of x many releases.
The datbases are automatically configured via Sql server to backup, TBH I didn't set that up it was a DB admin guy who is also involved with releases.
From a dev testing side I use jMeter (http://jmeter.apache.org/) to run some automated scripts that check that users can login and view certain screens, just to confirm nothing major has gone wrong. However there is usually a testing team to run more detailed tests, again not setup by me.
All of the above will probably take you sometime to setup but in the long run it will literally save you weeks of time over a year.
A free alternative to TFS is http://www.cruisecontrolnet.org/, I have used this in the past too and is pretty good.
You can automate your .Net deployments with Beanstalk, which will give you a way to trigger deployments with a single click, watch progress, manage permissions and see history of deployments. Check out this guide on the topic:
http://guides.beanstalkapp.com/deployments/deploy-dotnet.html
I hope you will find it useful.
P.S. - I work at Beanstalk.
I have a ASP.NET project with my own Development, Staging and Production servers.
In all environements, I move code manually. So everytime I have to promote a change, I perform the following steps:
Get my latest code from SVN.
Merge the code between lower and to be promoted environment using tools like Beyond Compare.
Then I move the respective ASPX and DLL files and any Stored Procedures or table data manually to Production.
This is a very time consuming process and I would like to get some automated methods for code moves.
Is there a way I can get the code moved from SVN to my Servers using some automated tools or in a automated packages.
I am using ASP.NET 2.0 with IIS 7 and SQL Server 2008.
msbuild can help you with getting the code from svn and building it. You will need to create simple batch files to run it, alternatively you can use Cruisecontrol for that.
Manual merges should be avoided. If you are using VS2010, you can use xsd to transform your config files to production version
I am not a big fan of storedprocs. If you can encapsulate your stored procs with the code there is less room for errors and rolling back changes etc as well as making the deployment easier. Database schema updates should be done in a batch file and applied automatically.
There are multiple ways to deploy: webdeploy or msi file. It depends on how much work is required during the deployment process
I would look into continuous integration. My favorite because it is simplest to use is TeamCity.
You will still have to do some work with MSBuild.
You can set up the builds to be a button push from the site.
Have the code pushed when you check into svn.
Just about any way you can think of.
I would strongly urge you to use it to ALWAYS build you code and run unit tests on each SVN check it. It does not have to deploy but TeamCity will provide to you constant feedback on the state of your solution.
Is there any way in ASP.NET website project, that allow to publish it from command prompt and I can continue working on project, or if it is not easy to use , at least speed up my publish task?
I know about the auto publishing tools like TFS or CruiseControl, so please don't tell me these ways.
I am thinking to create a .bat file , that I'll run everytime I have to publish. but it should not take changes made by me during its running process.
asp.net single file publish
I really like the Answer given by Ludwo, providing more information on that would be very helpful.
You can use MsBuild to publish your websites in parallel. Start with this article. It is about publishing one website using MsBuild. Define your projects inside ItemGroup and use MSBuild task this way:
<MSBuild Projects="#(YourProjectsToBuildInParallel)" BuildInParallel="true" ...
The final step is to enable parallel processing for MSBuild task.
Open another Visual Studio to continue :P. Publishing mechanism can detect updated and can send only changes. So dont upload full site everytime, if its really disturbs you.
Use source control and a build server mechanism. The build server should be able to pull from source control when you commit a change, build the project, do any unit tests you may/should have, and then deploy to a test site.
Depending on which build server platform you use you may or may have to do varying amounts of work. In the past I have used Bamboo by Atlassian. Fantastic product but you have to configure the deployment using MSBuild - it's fine but it can take some time to get it perfect. I am sure there are some good examples out there for it.
How it will work for you:
When you are finished working on a file/issue you can commit your changes. The build server will then detect these changes and wait a varying amount of time (waiting for you to commit more) e.g. 3 minutes, check out your changes, and deploy. You can set up notifications when the deployment is done to goto your testing team - with a link in the email saying where the site is, and what the change that occurred (based on your SVN commit log).
So your net effort is to check a file in with a correct comment - and you are finished.
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.
I'm fairly new to Subversion. Most of my work so far has been with Visual Source Safe. I'm looking to improve my deployment process with SVN and TeamCity. This is my plan:
There would be three branches:
Development (/trunk) - Entire ASP.NET solution, including a Web Deployment Project.
Staging (/branches/staging) - Web Deployment Project output (files needed for execution only - bin, .aspx, images, etc)
Deployment (/branches/deployment) - same as Staging
The CI process:
Commit source changes in trunk.
TeamCity detects the change, builds the solution and runs unit tests.
If all tests pass, TeamCity commits Web Deployment Project output to branches/staging and exports it to wwwroot on the staging web server.
Then when I'm ready to deploy to production, I'll do the following manually:
Merge branches/staging with branches/production
Update production web server's working copy of branches/production.
Does this make sense? Is there anything that a VSS user like myself might be missing/misunderstanding in this process?
I've written a pretty long post on how to do this with ASP.Net and web deployment projects - sounds right up your alley (don't know if I'm allowed to post this - mods?):
http://www.diaryofaninja.com/blog/2010/05/09/automated-site-deployments-with-teamcity-deployment-projects-amp-svn
Late answer, but can be helpful to the readers of this thread:
I have done a little online research and found a step-by-step tutorial that may help with your problem.
This tutorial covers the basics of the continuous integration (CI) and the means to build a new database whenever a new change is detected on the source control repository, run specified unit tests against the database, and synchronize tested database to QA environment.
The necessary prerequisite to implement the continuous integration (CI) in your database development process is to have a database under source control.
This might work for you, but usually the stage is the place where customers accept changes.
If you deploy on each build they dont get a consistent behaviour.
We dont keep the build result in SVN. For us it was ok to just have it in Teamcity under artifacts. I am not shure if we use best practice at this point.
You will be so much happier with SVN and Teamcity...good luck!