Using Azure Build Pipelines i'm trying to publish an ASP.NET WebForms website to IIS.
Everything works, except that I have several images in a folder of my website (e.g. /Images/1.jpg,2.jpg, etc..) and I would like to delete all images from that folder except 2.jpg and rename it to 1.jpg after I've deployed the website (or during the release pipeline if that's possible)
Is there any way to do this in Azure Pipelines?
Here you can take a look at a Catalog of the built-in tasks for build-release.
The Delete Files task states:
"Use this task in a build or release pipeline to delete files or folders from the agent working directory".
This may give you some ideas on how to achieve this.
I hope this help.
Comment on:
The Delete Files task states: "Use this task in a build or release pipeline to delete files or folders from the agent working directory".
and
".. from what I just tried, this can only delete files inside the artifact and not on the IIS Server."
That is correct for default behavior, but it has a parameter called SourceFolder, which has a default as "$(Build.SourcesDirectory)". When you specify the SourceFolder to be "C:" you can enter a pattern to delete anything on the server. Might be wiser to use a bit more elaborate path then just c:\ but it works. Just tried it on a pipeline where a file needed to be deleted not from the workingfolder but from the deployed IIS location.
PS in a release pipeline the default seems to be the $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory) and not the $(Build.SourcesDirectory). Whether that is because the Build.SourcesDirectory defaults to System.DefaultWorkingDirectory in release pipelines or the task is being smart I don't know.
Visual Studio 2015 has moved the IIS Express configuration file from My Documents into its own hidden .vs directory and tells IISExpress.exe to use that configuration file.
While this may sound like a good idea when you have multiple web applications with conflicting configurations, in fact it's not when you have web applications with custom configurations at all. Because this config file is in a temporary directory which can be deleted when checking out code into a new location from source control, or when cleaning up things in general.
The old location in the Documents folder is a central location and files there usually won't be deleted. If I need to make some changes to this file, like allowing the application to use Windows authentication, I edit this file once and I'm done. Now with the new location, I may need to make these changes multiple times. And since there's two config files (the old location still exists for me), it's even more confusing.
Then you shouldn't commit anything from .vs into version control, so it's not even possible to share these customisations with other team members.
What is the recommended way to update the applicationhost.config file so that it provides the environment required by the web application? Is there a tool that can run in a pre/post build step? Is there a customisation XML file that can be merged into the default file from .vs?
Is it possible at all to just check out a web application from source control and let it work in a local IIS Express? Or will it always require manual corrections after getting the code and web.config?
PS: I've forgotten one thing: There's the <UseGlobalApplicationHostFile> element in the project file which can be set to true, but as soon as I do that, I get an access denied error message every time I want to start the web application. So that doesn't seem to work well.
Got an ASP.NET site which I wish to perform an SVN info call from.
My understanding is this error message appears when a user hasn't yet done their basic setup to use SVN. Specifically there is a folder a few steps under AppData named Subversion which when not present and properly configured, shows the aforementioned message.
The ASP.NET site is running under the account "NetworkService" whose AppData folder I cannot find. I was planning to copy & paste the Subversion folder, as it's not easy to do an actual log in as NetworkService.
How can I proceed using NetworkService so that the "svn info" can also proceed?
Thanks in advance--
FYI: Using SharpSvn as a wrapper. Doubt that matters, but there you go
add this line before you authenticate and or perform any svn event.
client.LoadConfiguration(Path.Combine(Path.GetTempPath(), "Svn"), true);
Is it possible to deploy the contents of a folder (plain Html files) to a specific web application on a remote IIS6/7 server?
The following command does not error, but neither does it publish any files to the remote server:
msdeploy.exe -verb:sync -source:dirPath="c:\myHtmlFiles" -dest:auto,ComputerName="http://deploy.mycompany.co.uk/msdeploy?site=TestSite",includeAcls="false",username="administrator",password="myPassword" -enableRule:DoNotDeleteRule -disableLink:AppPoolExtension -disableLink:ContentExtension -allowUntrusted
NOTE:
WebDeploy is correctly installed on the destination server and works happily with packages created from msbuild scripts for .NET projects.
'http://deploy.mycompany.co.uk/msdeploy' is correct for the listening end-point.
The '?site=TestSite' query string was suggested elsewhere, but does not work.
The 'TestSite' web application exists on the target server.
Parameter files and -setParam do not work, and renders errors relating to the source not supporting the parameter 'IIS Web Application Name' if you attempt to set, declare, or provide it.
I just wrote a blog post to answer this at http://sedodream.com/2012/08/20/WebDeployMSDeployHowToSyncAFolder.aspx. From your question it looks like you are pretty familiar with MSDeploy so the answer might be a bit verbose but I wanted people with less knowledge of MSDeploy to be able to understand. I've pasted the answer below.
Web Deploy (aka MSDeploy) uses a provider model and there are a good number of providers available out of the box. To give you an example of some of the providers; when syncing an IIS web application you will use iisApp, for an MSDeploy package you will use package, for a web server webServer, etc. If you want to sync a local folder to a remote IIS path then you can use the contentPath provider. You can also use this provider to sync a folder from one website to another website.
The general idea of what we want to do in this case is to sync a folder from your PC to your IIS website. Calls to msdeploy.exe can be a bit verbose so let’s construct the command one step at at time. We will use the template below.
msdeploy.exe -verb:sync -source:contentPath="" -dest:contentPath=""
We use the sync verb to describe what we are trying to do, and then use the contentPath provider for both the source and the dest. Now let’s fill in what those values should be. For the source value you will need to pass in the full path to the folder that you want to sync. In my case the files are at C:\temp\files-to-pub. For the dest value you will give the path to the folder as an IIS path. In my case the website that I’m syncing to is named sayedupdemo so the IIS path that I want to sync is ‘sayedupdemo/files-to-pub’. Now that give us.
msdeploy.exe –verb:sync -source:contentPath="C:\temp\files-to-pub" -dest:contentPath='sayedupdemo/files-to-pub'
For the dest value we have not given any parameters indicating what server those command are supposed to be sent to. We will need to add those parameters. The parameters which typically need to be passed in are.
ComputerName – this is the URL or computer name which will handle the publish operation
Username – the username
Password – the password
AuthType – the authType to be used. Either NTLM or Basic. For WMSvc this is typically Basic, for Remote Agent Service this is NTLM
In my case I’m publishing to a Windows Azure Web Site. So the values that I will use are:
ComputerName: https://waws-prod-blu-001.publish.azurewebsites.windows.net/msdeploy.axd?site=sayedupdemo
Username: $sayedupdemo
Password: thisIsNotMyRealPassword
AuthType: Basic
All of these values can be found in the .publishSettings file (can be downloaded from Web Site dashboard from WindowsAzure.com). For the ComputerName value you will need to append the name of your site to get the full URL. In the example above I manually added ?site=sayedupdemo, this is the same name as shown in the Azure portal. So now the command which we have is.
msdeploy.exe
–verb:sync
-source:contentPath="C:\temp\files-to-pub"
-dest:contentPath='sayedupdemo/files-to-pub'
,ComputerName="https://waws-prod-blu-001.publish.azurewebsites.windows.net/msdeploy.axd?site=sayedupdemo"
,UserName='$sayedupdemo'
,Password='thisIsNotMyRealPassword'
,AuthType='Basic'
OK we are almost there! In my case I want to make sure that I do not delete any files from the server during this process. So I will also add –enableRule:DoNotDeleteRule. So our command is now.
msdeploy.exe
–verb:sync
-source:contentPath="C:\temp\files-to-pub"
-dest:contentPath='sayedupdemo/files-to-pub'
,ComputerName="https://waws-prod-blu-001.publish.azurewebsites.windows.net/msdeploy.axd?site=sayedupdemo"
,UserName='$sayedupdemo'
,Password='thisIsNotMyRealPassword'
,AuthType='Basic'
-enableRule:DoNotDeleteRule
At this point before I execute this command I’ll first execute it passing –whatif. This will give me a summary of what operations will be without actually causing any changes. When I do this the result is shown in the image below.
After I verified that the changes are all intentional, I removed the –whatif and executed the command. After that the local files were published to the remote server. Now that I have synced the files each publish after this will be result in only changed files being published.
If you want to learn how to snyc an individual file you can see my previous blog post How to take your web app offline during publishing.
dest:auto
In your case I noted that you were using dest:auto, you can use that but you will have to pass in the IIS app name as a parameter and it will replace the path to the folder. Below is the command.
msdeploy.exe
-verb:sync
-source:contentPath="C:\temp\files-to-pub"
-dest:auto
,ComputerName="https://waws-prod-blu-001.publish.azurewebsites.windows.net/msdeploy.axd?site=sayedupdemo"
,UserName='$sayedupdemo'
,Password='thisIsNotMyRealPassword'
,AuthType='Basic'
-enableRule:DoNotDeleteRule
-setParam:value='sayedupdemo',kind=ProviderPath,scope=contentPath,match='^C:\\temp\\files-to-pub$'
I am looking for different techniques/tools you use to deploy an ASP.NET web application project (NOT ASP.NET web site) to production?
I am particularly interested of the workflow happening between the time your Continuous Integration Build server drops the binaries at some location and the time the first user request hits these binaries.
Are you using some specific tools or just XCOPY? How is the application packaged (ZIP, MSI, ...)?
When an application is deployed for the first time how do you setup the App Pool and Virtual Directory (do you create them manually or with some tool)?
When a static resource changes (CSS, JS or image file) do you redeploy the whole application or only the modified resource? How about when an assembly/ASPX page changes?
Do you keep track of all deployed versions for a given application and in case something goes wrong do you have procedures of restoring the application to a previous known working state?
Feel free to complete the previous list.
And here's what we use to deploy our ASP.NET applications:
We add a Web Deployment Project to the solution and set it up to build the ASP.NET web application
We add a Setup Project (NOT Web Setup Project) to the solution and set it to take the output of the Web Deployment Project
We add a custom install action and in the OnInstall event we run a custom build .NET assembly that creates an App Pool and a Virtual Directory in IIS using System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry (This task is performed only the first time an application is deployed). We support multiple Web Sites in IIS, Authentication for Virtual Directories and setting identities for App Pools.
We add a custom task in TFS to build the Setup Project (TFS does not support Setup Projects so we had to use devenv.exe to build the MSI)
The MSI is installed on the live server (if there's a previous version of the MSI it is first uninstalled)
We have all of our code deployed in MSIs using Setup Factory. If something has to change we redeploy the entire solution. This sounds like overkill for a css file, but it absolutely keeps all environments in sync, and we know exactly what is in production (we deploy to all test and uat environments the same way).
We do rolling deployment to the live servers, so we don't use installer projects; we have something more like CI:
"live" build-server builds from the approved source (not the "HEAD" of the repo)
(after it has taken a backup ;-p)
robocopy publishes to a staging server ("live", but not in the F5 cluster)
final validation done on the staging server, often with "hosts" hacks to emulate the entire thing as closely as possible
robocopy /L is used automatically to distribute a list of the changes in the next "push", to alert of any goofs
as part of a scheduled process, the cluster is cycled, deploying to the nodes in the cluster via robocopy (while they are out of the cluster)
robocopy automatically ensures that only changes are deployed.
Re the App Pool etc; I would love this to be automated (see this question), but at the moment it is manual. I really want to change that, though.
(it probably helps that we have our own data-centre and server-farm "on-site", so we don't have to cross many hurdles)
Website
Deployer:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/install/deployer.aspx
I publish website to a local folder, zip it, then upload it over FTP. Deployer on server then extracts zip, replaces config values (in Web.Config and other files), and that's it.
Of course for first run you need to connect to the server and setup IIS WebSite, database, but after that publishing updates is piece of cake.
Database
For keeping databases in sync I use http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-compare/
If server is behind bunch of routers and you can't directly connect (which is requirement of SQL Compare), use https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi2/ to create VPN.
I deploy mostly ASP.NET apps to Linux servers and redeploy everything for even the smallest change. Here is my standard workflow:
I use a source code repository (like Subversion)
On the server, I have a bash script that does the following:
Checks out the latest code
Does a build (creates the DLLs)
Filters the files down to the essentials (removes code files for example)
Backs up the database
Deploys the files to the web server in a directory named with the current date
Updates the database if a new schema is included in the deployment
Makes the new installation the default one so it will be served with the next hit
Checkout is done with the command-line version of Subversion and building is done with xbuild (msbuild work-alike from the Mono project). Most of the magic is done in ReleaseIt.
On my dev server I essentially have continuous integration but on the production side I actually SSH into the server and initiate the deployment manually by running the script. My script is cleverly called 'deploy' so that is what I type at the bash prompt. I am very creative. Not.
In production, I have to type 'deploy' twice: once to check-out, build, and deploy to a dated directory and once to make that directory the default instance. Since the directories are dated, I can revert to any previous deployment simply by typing 'deploy' from within the relevant directory.
Initial deployment takes a couple of minutes and reversion to a prior version takes a few seconds.
It has been a nice solution for me and relies only on the three command-line utilities (svn, xbuild, and releaseit), the DB client, SSH, and Bash.
I really need to update the copy of ReleaseIt on CodePlex sometime:
http://releaseit.codeplex.com/
Simple XCopy for ASP.NET. Zip it up, sftp to the server, extract into the right location. For the first deployment, manual set up of IIS
Answering your questions:
XCopy
Manually
For static resources, we only deploy the changed resource.
For DLL's we deploy the changed DLL and ASPX pages.
Yes, and yes.
Keeping it nice and simple has saved us alot of headaches so far.
Are you using some specific tools or just XCOPY? How is the application packaged (ZIP, MSI, ...)?
As a developer for BuildMaster, this is naturally what I use. All applications are built and packaged within the tool as artifacts, which are stored internally as ZIP files.
When an application is deployed for the first time how do you setup the App Pool and Virtual Directory (do you create them manually or with some tool)?
Manually - we create a change control within the tool that reminds us the exact steps to perform in future environments as the application moves through its testing environments. This could also be automated with a simple PowerShell script, but we do not add new applications very often so it's just as easy to spend the 1 minute it takes to create the site manually.
When a static resource changes (CSS, JS or image file) do you redeploy the whole application or only the modified resource? How about when an assembly/ASPX page changes?
By default, the process of deploying artifacts is set-up such that only files that are modified are transferred to the target server - this includes everything from CSS files, JavaScript files, ASPX pages, and linked assemblies.
Do you keep track of all deployed versions for a given application and in case something goes wrong do you have procedures of restoring the application to a previous known working state?
Yes, BuildMaster handles all of this for us. Restoring is mostly as simple as re-executing an old build promotion, but sometimes database changes need to be manually restored, and data loss can occur. The basic rollback process is detailed here: http://inedo.com/support/tutorials/performing-a-deployment-rollback-with-buildmaster
web setup/install projects - so you can easily uninstall it if something goes wrong
Unfold is a capistrano-like deployment solution I wrote for .net applications. It is what we use on all of our projects and it's a very flexible solution. It solves most of the typical problems for .net applications as explained in this blog post by Rob Conery.
it comes with a good "default" behavior, in the sense that it does a lot of standard stuff for you: getting the code from source control, building, creating the application pool, setting up IIS, etc
releases based on what's in source control
it has task hooks, so the default behaviour can be easily extended or altered
it has rollback
it's all powershell, so there aren't any external dependencies
it uses powershell remoting to access remote machines
Here's an introduction and some other blog posts.
So to answer the questions above:
How is the application packaged (ZIP, MSI, ...)?
Git (or another scm) is the default way to get the application on the target machine. Alternatively you can perform a local build and copy the result over the Powereshell remoting connection
When an application is deployed for the first time how do you setup the App Pool and Virtual Directory (do you create them manually or with some tool)?
Unfold configures the application pool and website application using Powershell's WebAdministration Module. It allows us (and you) to modify any aspect of the application pool or website
When a static resource changes (CSS, JS or image file) do you redeploy the whole application or only the modified resource? How about when an assembly/ASPX page changes?
Yes unfold does this, any deploy is installed next to the others. That way we can easily rollback
when somehting goes wrong. It also allows us to easily trace back a deployed version to
a source control revision.
Do you keep track of all deployed versions for a given application?
Yes, unfold keeps old versions around. Not all versions, but a number of versions. It makes rolling back almost trivial.
We've been improving our release process for the past year and now we've got it down pat. I'm using Jenkins to manage all of our automated builds and releases, but I'm sure you could use TeamCity or CruiseControl.
So upon checkin, our "normal" build does the following:
Jenkins does a SVN update to fetch the latest version of the code
A NuGet package restore is done running against our own local NuGet repository
The application is compiled using MsBuild. Setting this up is an adventure, because you need to install the correct MsBuild and then the ASP.NET and MVC dll's on your build box. (As a side note, when I had <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews> entered in my .csproj files to compile the views, msbuild was randomly crashing, so I had to disable it)
Once the code is compiled the unit tests are run (I'm using nunit for this, but you can use anything you want)
If all the unit tests pass, I stop the IIS app pool, deploy the app locally (just a few basic XCOPY commands to copy over the necessary files) and then restart IIS (I've had problems with IIS locking files, and this solved it)
I have separate web.config files for each environment; dev, uat, prod. (I tried using the web transformation stuff with little success). So the right web.config file is also copied across
I then use PhantomJS to execute a bunch of UI tests. It also takes a bunch of screenshots at different resolutions (mobile, desktop) and stamps each screenshot with some information (page title, resolution). Jenkins has great support for handling these screenshots and they are saved as part of the build
Once the integration UI tests pass the build is successful
If someone clicks "Deploy to UAT":
If the last build was successful, Jenkins does another SVN update
The application is compiled using a RELEASE configuration
A "www" directory is created and the application is copied into it
I then use winscp to synchronise the filesystem between the build box and UAT
I send a HTTP request to the UAT server and make sure I get back a 200
This revision is tagged in SVN as UAT-datetime
If we've got this far, build is successful!
When we click "Deploy to Prod":
The user selects a UAT Tag that was previously created
The tag is "switched" to
Code is compiled and synced with Prod server
Http request to Prod server
This revision is tagged in SVN as Prod-datetime
The release is zipped and stored
All up a full build to production takes about 30 secs which I'm very, very happy with.
Upsides to this solution:
It's fast
Unit tests should catch logic errors
When a UI bug gets into production, the screenshots will hopefully show what revision # caused the it
UAT and Prod are kept in sync
Jenkins shows you a great release history to UAT and Prod with all of the commit messages
UAT and Prod releases are all tagged automatically
You can see when releases happen and who did them
The main downsides to this solution are:
Whenever you do a release to Prod you need to do a release to UAT. This was a conscious decision we made because we wanted to always ensure that UAT is always up to date with Prod. Still, it's a pain.
There's quite a few configuration files floating around. I've attempted to have it all in Jenkins, but there's a few support batch files needed as part of the process. (These are also checked in).
DB upgrade and downgrade scripts are part of the app and run at app startup. It works (mostly), but it's a pain.
I'd love to hear any other possible improvements!
Back in 2009, where this answer hails from, we used CruiseControl.net for our Continuous Integration builds, which also outputted Release Media.
From there we used Smart Sync software to compare against a production server that was out of the load balanced pool, and moved the changes up.
Finally, after validating the release, we ran a DOS script that primarily used RoboCopy to sync the code over to the live servers, stopping/starting IIS as it went.
At the last company I worked for we used to deploy using an rSync batch file to upload only the changes since the last upload. The beauty of rSync is that you can add exclude lists to exclude specific files or filename patterns. So excluding all of our .cs files, solution and project files is really easy, for instance.
We were using TortoiseSVN for version control, and so it was nice to be able to write in several SVN commands to accomplish the following:
First off, check the user has the latest revision. If not, either prompt them to update or run the update right there and then.
Download a text file from the server called "synclog.txt" that details who the SVN user is, what revision number they are uploading and the date and time of the upload. Append a new line for the current upload and then send it back to the server along with the changed files. This makes it extremely easy to find out what version of the site to roll back to on the off chance that an upload causes problems.
In addition to this there is a second batch file that just checks for file differences on the live server. This can highlight the common problem where someone would upload but not commit their changes to SVN. Combined with the sync log mentioned above we could find out who the likely culprit was and ask them to commit their work.
And lastly, rSync allows you to take a backup of the files that were replaced during the upload. We had it move them into a backup folder So if you suddenly realised that some of the files should not have been overwritten, you can find the last backup up version of every file in that folder.
While the solution felt a little clunky at the time I have since come to appreciate it a whole lot more when working in environments where the upload method is a lot less elegant or easy (remote desktop, copy and paste the entire site, for instance).
I'd recommend NOT just overwriting existing application files but instead create a directory per version and repointing the IIS application to the new path.
This has several benefits:
Quick to revert if needed
No need to stop IIS or the app pool to avoid locking issues
No risk of old files causing problems
More or less zero downtime (usually just a pause at the new appdomain initialises)
The only issue we've had is resources being cached if you don't restart the app pool and rely on the automatic appdomain switch.