I am attempting to stand up a VxWorks Workbench version 4.5.2 project into a CM system but am running into issues. I have just started learning VxWorks Workbench. I have searched a bit on how others have done this and I came across two solutions:
Make the project path relative in a sub-directory in the WindRiver home directory.
Do not version Workbench project files and just version my source code. Every client must re-create the Workbench project on their local machine.
The first solution would be ok but I have not been able to make it work. There seems to be some registry (Windows 10) or some path stored elsewhere for Workbench related workspace locations but the end result is the project is not loaded.
The second solution would be a last resort that I would prefer not to do as there are many steps to re-creating a project on a local machine making it tedious and error prone. Does anyone have experience versioning Workbench 4 projects into CM and can share possible solutions?
This can be complicated, and it very much depends on what project type you are talking about.
For DKMs, RTPs, Static and Shared Library projects, you need to version these project files:
.wrproject
.wrmakefile
.cproject
.project
Other project types will have these, but also some additional files that are required to recreate the project, for instance VIP projects also have a <projectname>.wpj file. A conclusive list is too long for this answer however.
You do not need to version the automatically generated Makefile , nor do you need to version the automatically generated build subfolders.
My advice is to store the projects along side your code. I personally prefer to store my projects outside of my workspace, and they should certainly not be stored anywhere in your Windriver installation folder.
I tend to use a structure like this:
c:\gitrepositorys\CuriousCamel\Source\
dkmProject1
.wrproject
.project
.wrmakefile
.cproject
dkm.c
dkmProject2
dkmProject3
vipProject
etc.
The above are all versioned. In terms of the actual Workbench Workspace, I tend to create it in c:\gitrepositorys\CuriousCamel\Workspace and this is explicitly not versioned - I create it fresh for each clone, and often delete and recreate when I switch branch.
Existing projects can be imported into the workspace using the import wizard (using the General->Existing Projects from Filesystem option). When you create a new project, just make sure you choose the "Create Project in external location" option, and select wherever you have chosen to store projects.
Related
I have two independent .net projects. One is like a project which is baiscalliy to process invoice and another project is something which I am calling as common as I am keeping all sharable/reusable code under that.
Now any project can consume this common-project by adding it via add Existing project option so that source code will not move to consumer project which is Invoice management in my case.
Now if I add common project as reference and run my CI pipeline its failed as its not able to find the path of common project which is obvious as it may be different from my local machine to build server.
Now the solution that I am aware of are below :
Make common as Nuget package and use it under invoice management.
Build common project dll at some centralized file server and give that path in Invoice management
for reference instead of absolute path.
Both solutions are not simple to implement so I am looking for any better quick solution for the situation where project setup is like this and CI build has to execute.
The best would be actually reference via NuGet package. However, there is a third option which I do not recommend. You can use multiple repository pipeline. You will checkout there two repositories. In thi case you have to mimic folder structure wich you will get on AzureDevops. Otherwise build will fail as it will not find the references.
I am creating an application which will coordinate and organize a lot of standalone functions. For instance, the main application might be called ABC Company Operations, and within it might be Engineering Bills Of Material and Project Management Purchase Orders, among many others. I want to develop each of these tools as a standalone solution, then include them in the main application when I am done with them. For one thing this will allow me to distribute the main application with a fair number of tools complete, then issue an update when each new one is included, and for another thing having these functions in their own projects will cut down on the madness inside the solution explorer.
Searching and reading have shown me how to include existing projects in a solution, but they are included as a reference - the files continue to reside in the standalone solution. This is not good because I wish to make any changes needed in the standalone, then replace the project in the main solution when those changes are done and also because I would prefer not to have all these solutions hanging around in a public place.
I tried just copying and pasting the project directory from the standalone solution into the main solution, but the solution explorer hasn't picked it up and there are somehow two listings of the standalone in the main Visual Studio screen where you select which solution you will work on. This seems like a bad road, so before I continue down it I would like to ask for any advice you folk may have.
Visual Studio allows you to reference the same project in different solutions.
Right click the solution in the solution explorer > Add > Existing Project...
I have done it and it works perfectly.
But very often referencing the DLL of a class library project is just enough. Usually you would reference the bin\Release version. You can even reference an EXE.
I achieve something like what you want by using the Subversion code management system. I keep each project in a directory. These are top-level directories in the Subversion repository.
Each solution is also a top-level entry in the Subversion repository, but does not have any projects in with it. So I have in my repository something like this:-
project directory
project
files directory
files
project directory
project
files directory
files
single-project-solution directory
single-project solution
single-project-solution directory
single-project-solution
multiple-project solution directory
multiple-project solution
I then use svn:externals to include all the needful project directories when either a single project solution or a multiple project solution is checked out, and it ends up in the working copy like this:-
multiple-project solution directory
multiple-project solution
project directory
project
files directory
files
project directory
project
files directory
files
or
single-project-solution directory
single-project-solution
project directory
project
files directory
files
Q: Is it possible/feasible, to have a multiple solutions stored in a single 'Solutions' directory, and multiple NuGet packages stored in another single 'Packages' directory, and for everything to work nicely with different versions?
Further details...
For example: I have 2 projects. ProjectA requires Newstonsoft.Json.4.5.11, ProjectB requires Newstonsoft.Json.5.0.6.
For sake of example I have a solution file for both. I need all my solution files in the same directory (this is just the process that is followed, all the solutions in a directory are built in turn).
By default NuGet will create a packages directory alongside each solution file.
I have created a nuget.config file to allow me to store packages in a single directory, called 'SharedPackages', following this answer: Nu-Get & issue with project level dependences for projects referenced by multiple solutions
<settings>
<repositoryPath>..\SharedPackages</repositoryPath>
</settings>
This works great so far, so my structure is:
\Projects\ProjectA
\Projects\ProjectB
\Solutions
\SharedPackages
If I create ProjectB, it has Json.NET 4.5.11 by default. If I go to Manage NuGet Packages for Solution I have the option to update it to version 5.0.6. This is great as ProjectB needs the newer version. What is even better is now in my Shared Packages directory I have a directory for both versions of Json.NET side-by-side, so ProjectA can use the older version.
However, now I want to create ProjectC as a full MVC4 Web Application. For JQuery, you get version 1.8.2 currently when creating an ASP.NET MVC4 application in VS2012. I also get Knockout 2.2.0.
My process is, I delete the default packages directory, move the new solution to the Solutions directory alongside the existing nuget.config and edit the new solution file to update the relative path to the new .csproj file. Then when I build, NuGet Package Manager restores the extra packages I need (that weren't in use by ProjectA and ProjectB) to the Shared Packages directory. However... I get build errors, it cannot resolve some references including DotNetOpenAuth, WebGrease, System.Spatial... the references are pointing to the packages directory, not the SharedPackages directory...
As an aside: if I Enable Package Restore for solution, then it also tries to restore them to a packages folder within the Solutions directory by default, instead of restoring them to the SharedPackages directory.
Around about this point I realise that just creating the nuget.config file wasn't enough for ProjectA and ProjectB either, although they appeared to be working originally, the references in the .csproj. file are pointing to the bin folder beneath the project file, instead of my SharedPackages directory.
So I manually 'Find and Replace' ..\packages with ..\..\SharedPackages for all the references. I have to do this for ProjectA, ProjectB and ProjectC. Now everything builds and seems to work OK, new packages go into the right place.
Now, if I go back to ProjectA, and add the Knockout package, this is version 2.3.0. This installs happily alongside the other Knockout package in use by Project C which is version 2.2.0. Doing this also installs JQuery 2.0.3, alongside JQuery 1.8.2. So far so good.
Just as a sanity check, I create another Web Application - ProjectD, move the files around, update the references in the solution and the project. This time everything builds first time. I try and update WebGrease in ProjectD to see if it will retain the older version for ProjectC. This results in more issues, it installs it to the packages directory instead. WebGrease seems to have a separate config setting as well <WebGreaseLibPath>... it won't seem to restore...
I then go back to ProjectB and try 'Update All' - it looks like the files that already exist are updated in SharedPackages, with new version directories alongside the existing ones, but any new dependencies (e.g. now I have a reference to Owin.dll) get placed in the packages folder :( If I delete the packages folder, and the bin folder within ProjectB, then build the ProjectB solution, understandably I get build errors, the packages aren't automatically restored to the SharedPackages directory at any point.
Is it even possible to set NuGet to update packages in a common directory other than packages alongside the solution?
Would it be easier to just use the default packages folder, instead of SharedPackages, or would I still have problems?
This is turning into way too many questions. To try and keep it in scope, has anyone attempted a similar setup, what obstacles did they overcome and how did they manage it, or did they give up altogether? If you gave up, how did you end up using NuGet to manage packages in a massive code base?
I appreciate this is close to this question, which was well answered for that particular question, however the use case here is slightly different: NuGet and multiple solutions. It is also pretty much identical to this question: Setting up a common nuget packages folder for all solutions when some projects are included in multiple solutions, but I have decided to add this anyway as that question is more focused on the having different configurations for different solutions, whereas here I want all the packages in one place, I just want to implement it and see if it is possible. Also I think the troubleshooting and research time may be useful to someone.
Ok, so I've got a somewhat complicated problem with my build environment that I'm trying to deal with.
I have a solution file that contains multiple C# projects which is built by a NAnt script calling MSBuild - passing MSBuild the name of the solution file and a path to copy the binaries to. This is because I want my automated build environment (CruiseControl.Net) to create a folder named after the revision of each build - this way I can easily go back to previous binaries for any reason.
So idealy I have a folder layout like this
c:\build\nightly\rev1
c:\build\nightly\rev2
c:\build\nightly\rev3
...
c:\build\nightly\rev10
etc.
The problem that's arisen is I recently added the latest version of the Unity IoC container to my project, checking it directly out of MS's online SVN repository. What's happening is I have a Silverlight 3 project that references the Silverlight version of Unity but I also have other projects (namely my Unit testing project) that reference the standard (non-Silverlight) version of Unity.
So what happens is since MSBuild is dumping everything into one single folder the Silverlight version of the Unity assembly is overwriting the non-Silverlight version because they have the exact same assembly file name.
Then when CruistControl runs my unit tests they fail because they don't have the proper dependencies available anymore (they try to load the Silverlight specific Unity assembly which obviously doesn't work).
So what I want to do is:
keep my desired output directory
structure (folder\revision)
I don't want to have to manually edit
every single proj file I have as this
is error prone when adding new
projects to the solution
Idealy I would like MSBuild to put everything into a folder structure similar to this:
nightly\revision1\project1
nightly\revision1\project2
nightly\revision1\project3
...
nightly\revision2\project1
nightly\revision2\project2
nightly\revision2\project3
etc
I can't modify the Unity project to give it a different file name because it comes from another SVN repository I cannot commit changes to. I found a similar question posted here and the suggested solution was to use a "master" MSBuild file that used a custom task to extract all the project file names out of the solution then loop over each one building them. I tried that but it doesn't build them in the order of their dependencies, so it fails for my project.
Help?
Firstly I would always have the build server delete the old working copy and check out a fresh copy to avoid any problems with stale artifacts from the previous build.
Next I would have nant or msbuild build the solutions as before with the artifacts from each build going to their local working output folders.
After that I'd move the artifacts from their working paths to their output paths, this shouldn't require digging through the project files since you can just tell msbuild/nant to copy working\project1\bin\release\**\*.* to artifacts\project1\.
The script that does this should ideally be stored along with the source with the main file, e.g. build.nant or build.proj in top level of the trunk.
For third party libraries I would simple include the DLLs directory in your repository. Nothing worse than writing some code and having a third party dependency break your build because of changes on their end.
Simply document the versions of the libraries you are using, and if you must update them, you'll have a better sense of what breaks the build before you even check it in.
Also, doesn't CC.Net automatically handle the providing of releases based on revision? I'm using TeamCity and it keeps a copy of the artifacts of every build.
I highly recommend reading JP Boodhoo's Automating Builds with NAnt blog series. That's been my starting point and have made lots of changes for my own taste. I also highly recommend checking out the builds of many open sources projects for examples. I've learned a lot from the builds of the Castle/Nhibernate/Rhino-Tools stack.
Often times a developer on my team will create a new Visual Studio project and reference a DLL somewhere on their local machine (e.g., C:\mydlls\homersimpson\test.dll). Then, when I get the project from the source control repository, I cannot build the project because I do not have the referenced dll in the exact same location on my machine.
What is the best practice for storing and referencing shared libraries?
I typically create a lib folder in my project, where I put the referenced dll's. Then I point the reference to the dll in the lib folder. This way, every developer can build the project after retrieving from source control.
If it's a project that was built in house, you could also add that project to your solution.
If the assembly is not in the GAC, create a directory called dependencies and add all assemblies there. The folder and the assemblies are added to source control. The rule is that given any project in source control, all that is required to build is to do a checkout and build the project (or run some tool that is also checked into the project).
If you add a folder to the solution and add the assemblies to the solution folder, this also provides a visual cue to the devs that indicates what external dependencies are present... all dependencies are in that directory. Relative paths ensure that Visual Studio can locate the references without a problem.
For large solutions, with 20+ projects, this makes life much easier!
Best practice I would expect would have Your SC repository include and enforce the relative locations of referenced objects for you (usually via a shared path), so you aren't dealing with this issue directly. The original developer should check in this information.
If you check in the actual DLLs into source control, then you can reference them by relative path and all developers will automatically get any dependencies when they next update the project.
Adding a DLL reference by full path would be a developer error just as adding a source file by full path would be an error.
Rule of thumb: If the project isn't a part of the solution, reference released dlls from a source controlled /binshare or /lib directory that is under your solution's source control tree. All external dependencies should have versioned DLLs that go in this /binshare directory.
I understand what your co-worker is doing in regards to convenience. However, that developer's approach is diametrically opposed to proper configuration/build management.
Example: If you use the MS Data Application Block as a dependency in your application, you should reference a properly released binary, instead of getting latest from MS's dev source trunk.
I think this approach is quite the opposite of what I would consider best practice. I think it would be a much better approach to keep the third party binaries out of the source repository and reference them through something like a Maven repository in your build process. Putting the dlls in the source repository unnecessarily bloats the contents of the repository and results in gets of projects taking considerably longer then necessary. It also makes the independent management of the third party binaries' versions obfuscated by not referencing the version by name but rather implied by referencing the dll of a particular version stored in the projects lib folder.
Why not set up a private NuGet-feed? This way, there is only a single copy of a dependency (the NuGet repository) and multiple projects can reference it. Multiple versions of the dependency can coexist, and each project can reference a different version, if necessary. Also, TFS Build can restore the packages at build time.
Configuring VS: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/package/nuget/consume