How To Run MSBuild scripts in .wixproj? - asp.net

Im trying to learn to make a web installer using Windows Installer XML (WIX 3.5). I found this blog about using msbuild in .wixproj files to avoid the scenario where the installer ends up dropping the web project assemblies right in the root of the app instead of keeping them in the bin folder like they're supposed to be.
Here is the link to that:
<http://www.paraesthesia.com/archive/2010/07/30/how-to-consume-msdeploy-staged-web-site-output-in-a.aspx>
But after adding the MSBuild scripts in the .wixproj file, I don't know what to do anymore. According to the instruction after adding the MSBuild script:
"When that target runs, you'll see a .wxs file pop out in the .wixproj project folder. Add the generated .wxs to your .wixproj project so it knows to include it in the build."
I really don7t know what this means. How can I run the target? I tried to build it but there was no .wxs file generated in the .wixproj folder.
Am I missing something? Please help...

Assuming you have added the section from the tutorial:
<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
...
</Target>
The target will be run automatically when you build the project. The "BeforeBuild" target is one of the standard entry-points to add your own modifications to the build. The target will then generate a file (named [WebProjectName].wxs that is placed in the same directory as your wixproj file. Click on the show all files button in visual studio and right-click on the file and "Include in project" That will then include the wxs is your installer and when you next build it will have the correct folder/file structure.

Related

How to make Visual Studio Publish honor the "Copy if Newer" setting?

An ASP.NET (not Core) project.
Certain files, such as NLog.config, are set to Copy if newer (as per NLog documentation).
And if I click Build this works: NLog.config is only copied to the build directory if it is newer than the version that already is in the build directory.
However, if I click Publish, then NLog.config is copied to the publish directory no matter what, overwriting the version that is already there. (I'm publishing to file system).
It would be really helpful if the version that already is in the publish directory took precedence.
Note that NLog.config is likely to contain settings that are specific to the environment the app is published to and cannot be set in the app's source code nor pushed to git.
There is an option to make Publish not delete files already present if it can't overwrite them with anything - so if I remove NLog.config from source code and only keep it in the publish (and build) directories, things will work as expected. However, I cannot do so: I was explicitly asked to make Publish place a default version of NLog.config that only logs to a file if there is no such version in the publish location yet.
Is there any remedy here? Is there any way to force Publish not to overwrite NLog.config if it already exists in target location or at least not overwrite it if it's newer?
Maybe you can try and fiddle with CopyToPublishDirectory that can have the values Always, PreserveNewest, Never:
<None Include="nlog.config">
<CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
<CopyToPublishDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToPublishDirectory>
</None>

Qt renaming path of the project

sometimes when I rename the path to a qt project, it cannot be run even though I clean qmake and rebuild it!!! the path does not contain any space. and the project is completely correct and I know that the error is for path renaming , for example when I rename :
D:/abd/projects/LAND_2/Land_QT/...
to
D:/abd/projects/LAND_2/Land2_QT_SA/...
it cannot be build and says that some include file is missing(but the file is there!).
what is the problem?
I work with dynamic qt5.2 on windows 7.
Edit:
when I copy the project folder to a new directory( a path upper than current path) then the project can be build and run.
When you rename the path to the project, go to the project folder and delete the file with .pro.user extension. Open the project and Qt will ask you to configure the project. Choose the required kit, build and run the project.It should build successfully now
If you have changed path multiple times the .pro.user file is created multiple times delete all files with this extension and compile

Removing comments from web.config on build

Is it possible to remove the commented lines from a web.config on build?
xml transform is fine to remove some elements but I couldn't find any syntax to clean the comments from the file.
We are using TFS 2010 build server for our builds.
<add xdt:Transform="RemoveAll" xdt:Locator="XPath(//comment())" />
Put this node within the root node of your transform file. "XPath(//comment())" selects all XML comment nodes to delete.
UPDATE: See actual and working answer below.
It's not possible to do with xml transformation.
But you can do it with your own console app or msbuild task.
See example code here Remove XML comments using Visual Studio 2010 Web Config Transformation
I had a similar problem where I wanted to remove dev comments from the config files before I published to the web site. I wrote an app that will recursively remove comments from config files in the directory I specify on the command line. The sample below assumes YourCommentRemover will do the same.
I included the comment remover project as part of my solution and referenced it in the web app I plan to deploy. You can just add the executable as a reference if you want. Since I didn't want the comment remover to get deployed, I added a task to delete it from the bin directory where it was being staged for deploy, (ProjectDir)obj\$(Configuration)\Package\PackageTmp\.
Open your project file in a text editor (You can right-click on the project file in the solution explorer and select 'Edit Project File').
Go to the very end of the project file and insert the following before </Project>:
<Target Name="BeforePublish" BeforeTargets="MSDeployPublish">
<Exec Command="$(ProjectDir)bin\YourCommentRemover $(ProjectDir)obj\$(Configuration)\Package\PackageTmp" />
<Exec Command="del $(ProjectDir)obj\$(Configuration)\Package\PackageTmp\bin\YourCommentRemover.*" />
</Target>
This target will run before any files are copied to the web application location on publish.

Specifying folders not to sync in Web Deploy

I use the following script to deploy my ASP.NET MVC app to our web server:
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe MySolution.sln^
/p:Configuration=TeamCity-Test^
/p:OutputPath=bin^
/p:DeployOnBuild=True^
/p:DeployTarget=MSDeployPublish^
/p:MsDeployServiceUrl=https://mywebserver.com:8172/msdeploy.axd^
/p:username=MyDomain\MyUser^
/p:password=MyPassword^
/p:AllowUntrustedCertificate=True^
/p:DeployIisAppPath=mywebsitename.com^
/p:MSDeployPublishMethod=WMSVC
Now I need to specify to not sync the /uploads folder. Can I specify that in this script? Thanks!
Clarification:
I have the Uploads folder in my project. I'd like for Web Deploy to create the folder. I do not want it to delete the folder/subfolders/files from my web server because it contains user-uploaded content.
Clarification #2:
I just found the SkipExtraFilesOnServer=True option. However, I don't want this to be global. I'd like to set it to a single folder.
UPDATE:
Apparently, what you really want is prevent web deploy from removing existing directory on the destination server, but still have the folder created in case it's not there. You can accomplish this as follows:
create YourWebProjectName.wpp.targets file next to you the project file with the following content:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<ItemGroup>
<MsDeploySkipRules Include="SkipELMAHFolderFiles">
<SkipAction></SkipAction>
<ObjectName>filePath</ObjectName>
<AbsolutePath>$(_DestinationContentPath)\\NameOfYourFolder\\.*</AbsolutePath>
<Apply>Destination</Apply>
<XPath></XPath>
</MsDeploySkipRules>
<MsDeploySkipRules Include="SkipELMAHFolderChildFolders">
<SkipAction></SkipAction>
<ObjectName>dirPath</ObjectName>
<AbsolutePath>$(_DestinationContentPath)\\NameOfYourFolder\\.*\\*</AbsolutePath>
<Apply>Destination</Apply>
<XPath></XPath>
</MsDeploySkipRules>
</ItemGroup>
</Project>
Change NameOfYourFolder and YourWebProjectName accordingly. This assumes, you have it in the root, I believe, you can use relative path if it's not the case.
The first MsDeploySkipRules entry tells webdeploy not to remove any files in Name_OfYourFolder.
The second MsDeploySkipRules tells webdeploy not to remove any child folders in Name_OfYourFolder.
Also, to have the folder created if it's not present on the destination server, you have to do the following:
include the folder into the project
add a dummy DeployemntPlaceholder.txt file into it and include it into the project as well
DeployemntPlaceholder.txt is required to tell MSBUild to add the folder into the package: empty folders are ignored.
I've tested this approach and it works fine when you run publish in the manner you've shown. I've used this answer to get the msbuild items syntaxt right. I believe, this is a MSBuild way to customize flags, passed to webdeploy by MSBuild Deployment Pipeline.
If you ran MSDeploy directly, you could use skip arguments in the following manner:
-skip:objectname='filePath',absolutepath='logs\\.*\\someNameToExclude\.txt'
UPDATE 2
You might also want to have ACL write permissions set on your \Uploads folder - there's a complete guide to do this: Setting Folder Permissions On Web Publish
Conserning the original question "Specifying folders not to sync in Web Deploy", the easiest way to do this is as follows:
You can create a publish profile and add the following lines:
<PropertyGroup>
<ExcludeFilesFromDeployment>
File1.aspx;File2.aspx
</ExcludeFilesFromDeployment>
<ExcludeFoldersFromDeployment>
Folder1;Folder2
</ExcludeFoldersFromDeployment>
</PropertyGroup>
I've tested this approach for excluding files using publish profiles. An easy guide is here (scroll to Edit the .pubxml file to exclude robots.txt section).
You can also do this in .wpp.targets file or edit you csproj. See more information at Web Deployment FAQ for Visual Studio and ASP.NET

Qmake does not support build directories below the source directory

I have created an application that compiles and runs like a charm on OS-X. I would now like to start getting it to work on Windows. To start, I copied the project to a windows machine and just tried to compile, but got this error:
:: warning: Qmake does not support build directories below the source directory.
Any ideas?
Set the shadow build directory to some folder on the same level of your project directory:
folder/
project/
project-shadow-build-release/
project-shadow-build-debug/
You can do this in the "Projects" view, via the toolbar on the left. To me, this warning was just an annoyance, a project never failed to build because of it.
Don't copy your project.pro.user file when you are copying a project from one machine to another, or from one directory to another. When you open the project, Qt Creator will offer to create a new build directory in the proper place.
Andref gave the correct answer to resolve this warning, but you may want to understand why this requirement exists.
In fact, the build directory must be at the same folder level as the project (i.e. it can't be above or below). The reason why is that the linker is called from the build directory. Hence, any relative paths to library files will be different than what you entered in your project file.
It kinda sucks. I like to put all intermediate files in their own folder. But you simply can't with qmake.
.pro.user are generated files by Qt Creator. They are unrelated to qmake and should not be touched (and not put into a VCS for that matter)
Just remove the files with the pro.user extension , worked for me
I also got this, trying to compile a project created on linux.
Another way to solve it is to change the paths in the .pro.user file (in the directory of your project)
Right Click on a project: Set As Active Project
Click on the Projects button (The one with the spanner image)
Edit build configuration : Debug / Profile / Release / and change the default directories, OR just uncheck the Shadow build check box.
The Build directory path should now change to black, from red

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