I have a repository that contains two solutions. One solution (in this case solution A) for a web project that has a reference to a project in the second solution (in this case solution B) (in the same repository).
When I build the web project in VSTS I pull the repository, build solution B, and then build solution B.
Build solution B work, but, the build of solution A is failed cause the reference dll of the project in solution B didn't found
You have a few options:
1) Use project references. You don't need to depend on an assembly.
2) Use NuGet packages -- the shared piece is built via a CI process, turned into a NuGet package, and then published to a Packages feed. The dependent projects can reference the NuGet package and restore an appropriate version on build.
Which approach you should take depends on a lot of factors. If you're not worried about versioning, just use project references.
As Daniel said that it’s better to use NuGet packages.
Regarding reference the assembly file directly, refer to these steps:
Open your web project file through Notepad
Find the related reference and check Hintpath value, should be relative path.
Add Copy files task to your build definition (Before build solution A task) to copy corresponding assembly files to corresponding folder (per to that relative path)
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've just committed some code changes to my repository and all of a sudden (after weeks of being fine). The TC build starts failing as it fails to download the NuGet package for Microsoft.Bcl.Build.1.0.6.
I ended up having to manually copy the contents of the packages directory to the TC build location which utterly defeats the point of NuGet.
What can I check to get to the root cause of this?
Everything about NuGet is enabled in the solution for getting packages.
I've blogged about this issue at http://sedodream.com/2012/12/24/SlowCheetahBuildServerSupportUpdated.aspx. To summarize NuGet package restore (prior to 2.7) is implemented as a part of the MSBuild build process. When MSBuild starts a build it will evaluate the project file and any Import declarations importing other files. This happens before any target gets executed.
Since NuGet pkg restore is a part of the build process the .targets files get restored at a point in time that it is too late for the Import statement to have any impact.
You can work around this by either checking in the .targets file as you stated, or by invoking pkg restore before the build process. I've created a NuGet package, PackageRestore, which can help with the latter approach.
To use PackageRestore just add the NuGet package to your project which will automatically create a file named packageRestore.proj in your projects directory. When configuring your build, you will need to build that item before your .sln/.csproj file.
OK This is a bit of a nasty issue.
If you are having this problem you need to do something rather ugly to your repository.
Make sure you are checking in the packages\repositories.config file.
Then if your build is failing with unresolved references to Microsoft.Bcl.Build you will need to also checkin the .targets file for this package. eg:
package\Microsoft.Bcl.Build.x.x.x\tools\Microsoft.Bcl.Build.targets
Hideous ...
This blog post is the most thorough one I've seen for explaining the workaround options:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2013/06/12/nuget-package-restore-issues.aspx
None are great IMO - this problem still needs a better solution.
But for the time being, the best recommended option is to check the Bcl.Build .targets file into source control - which means when the version of Bcl.Build is updated, you'll need to add the new .targets file, and remove the old one.
I think (but am not sure, so I created this SO question: What does the Microsoft.Bcl.Build NuGet package do?) that Microsoft.Bcl.Build is only needed for development, and is not needed on a build server. So, I have a Builder.targets file that only exists in the build environment, that is indirectly <import> ed into all of our projects, which includes this bit of MSBuild xml:
<!-- Skip Microsoft.Bcl.Build functionality when building only from Source. Presumably Microsoft.BclBuild is only needed for development. -->
<PropertyGroup>
<BclBuildImported>Ignore</BclBuildImported>
</PropertyGroup>
Since the block of MSBuild logic inserted into your project by the Bcl.Build nuget package is dependent on the BclBuildImported property being empty, this effectively sidesteps the problem in my build environment - the Microsoft.Bcl.Build steps are skipped, and it no longer breaks my CI builds.
Note that since it appears that this package manages binding redirects in your app.config, and ensures that transitive dependencies are included in your projects, it's important to leave in for development. But I'm not currently aware of a need for it in a build server environment.
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