I've looked over several suggestions for getting SlowCheetah transforms to work with Visual Studio Online's build system, but nothing seems definitive, especially for the Visual Studio 2015 world.
I have a web project with both build configurations and publish profiles in place. If I'm using the one-click publish, everything works as expected; first the build config transform fires, then the publish profile config transform. However, on VSO, only the web.config is transformed, and then only for the build configuration.
The goal would be to provide the build definition on VSO with the build configuration and publish profile to use (which I know can be provided via MSBuild) and trigger the transforms to work as appropriate. I'm using the new VSO build definitions that are done online through the web interface (not the XAML ones), and the good news is this has an option to restore NuGet packages automatically (which has been one of the issues in the past). It looks like other MSBuild steps could also be added, so maybe there's a way to trigger the process after the build or something.
Has anyone gotten this to work properly? Thanks.
I did a quick test on this but didn't see any issue.
The screenshot for my project:
And the screenshot for my build definition:
After the web project is published with these settings, I can get the "Web.config" and "XMLFile1.xml" transformed with the "edd" profile and "XMLFile2.xml" transformed with build configuration.
Related
Some original info was changed to make the post more focused on the real issue after it was found.
These are some of the details of the current environment. I listed these only because questions were raised in other posts to determine what was and was not working in the current environment:
Upon check-in TFS 2017 successfully builds a web project on the build agent.
A VS 2017 publish profile can manually transform the project properly
The build machine artifact location includes both the transform and profile files
The artifact location is shown below:
I have researched this in depth on Microsoft's VS site, SO and other forums, but there are so many different answers, many of them for older versions, I have been unable to piece this together. As a result I have several sub-questions.
1) Can transforms be engaged in both Builds and Releases?. I read that transforms are applied during the publish process, not the build process, and that made me wonder if it is even possible to do this during a Build. But then when I was exploring releases, I saw all the same tasks usable in a Build, which suggests I can publish with a transform in either Build or Release. Is that correct?
2) Does TFS 2017 require a lot of special handling to engage a transform file? Some of the posts instructed the editing of the .proj file. I wanted to get a confirmation before doing that kind of detailed manipulation, especially given the improvements in TFS 2017.
The following information is the state of the current build definition named "confPanner-CI". The shaded PS script was successfully used to upload to the hosting location to test the whole process, but that is not adequate for the task at hand which requires transforms to be applied:
The full MSBuild Arguments which also created a temp location for the powershell script are:
/p:DeployOnBuild=True /p:DeployDefaultTarget=WebPublish /p:WebPublishMethod=FileSystem /p:DeleteExistingFiles=True /p:publishUrl=c:\ConfPlnrWeb
If I were to add a task for publishing I saw the Publish Build Artifacts task:
But none of the settings as shown below seem to relate to transforms:
The bottom line question is: How do I configure the build so the web project upload has the proper web transform applied?
Update: The following added after the answer below led to at least one place where VS transforms can be applied during a build, and presumably also a release.
Inside the MSBuild Build solution task set the Configuration as shown below:
Publish Build Artifacts task is used to publish the related artifacts ( The “a” working directory contains the artifacts (also known as the “drop”) that are uploaded at the end of the build) to Visual Studio Team Services/TFS or a file share.
Usually it should be a package and be used in a deploy task such as Deploy: WinRM - IIS Web App Deployment or Azure App Service Deployment to achieved the deployment.
1) Can transforms be engaged in both Builds and Releases?
Yes, you could also do this in a build pipeline with the useage of build deploy task. You need to add the task after the publish build artifacts task.
2) Does TFS 2017 require a lot of special handling to engage a transform file?
update
The BuildConfiguration variable is different in TFS 2017, it's inside
the MSBuild task! Transforms are now applied according
to the MSBuild task Configuration setting.
Edit the .proj file is a method to do the transform. If you don't need to change the transform, it will auto do it during the build.You could also use some 3-rd party task/extension for extra transform such as: XDT Transform
Usually we separate the build and release for the deployment, cause it's easy to configure multiple environments and easy to debug issue. You definitely could do this only in build but with a bloated process. You could refer this tutorial: Build and Deploy Azure Web Apps using Team Foundation Server/Services vNext Builds.
For a separate build and release solution, you could take a look at this blog: Using web.config transforms and Release Manager – TFS 2017/Team Services edition
My company uses TFS 2010 to deploy our web apps from our local environment to our development environment. Here's the compiled output in my local directory for one of our vended web apps, ProGet, (http://inedo.com/proget/overview) in question that isn't deploying correctly. I expect all of what I see below to deploy to our development server:
Here's my .xaml build file:
Finally, here's my solution in Visual Studio:
When I queue the build, this is what's built out to our development server - notice it's missing a bunch of files/folders, but it does include "Resources" and "bin" and web.config:
This app is a vended application, ProGet, an already developed corporate Nuget repository that we purchased a source code license for. Does anyone have any ideas what I might be doing wrong?
EDIT
Here's a screenshot of my local IIS and the window to the right is a result of right clicking the website and choosing "Explore". Notice the *.cs files. Weird they don't compile down.
The Default Build Template (DefaultTemplate.xaml) should output the same files you get when you compile locally.
However, from your screenshots it looks like you are using a custom build template xxxx_DeploymentProcess.xaml that is obviously doing something different with how it outputs the build files. There is no way for us (stackoverflow community) to know what your custom build process is doing.
You could try switching back to the default template, and we'd be able to help you then. But, there's a good chance that you are using a custom build template for a reason, and you might not want to eliminate it before you know what it's doing.
We have with success been updating our development web site at a daily basis using msdeploy from TFS2010.
This was working fine until we upgraded to VS2012, our application from .NET Framework 4.0 to 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC from 3.0 to 4.0. It look like all is well and assemblies deployed but nothing has actually been deployed.
I have been looking into this for two days now and can't figure out why this is happening and now I am running out of ideas.
Below is part of my build script in the way it has been working before the upgrade.
<MSBuild
Projects="$(SolutionRoot)\My.Web\My.Web.csproj"
Properties="MvcBuildViews=False;AllowUntrustedCertificate=True;AuthType=Basic;Configuration=Dev;CreatePackageOnPublish=True;DeployIisAppPath=dev.myweb;DeployOnBuild=True;DeployTarget=MsDeployPublish;MSDeployPublishMethod=WMSvc;MsDeployServiceUrl=https://10.xxx.xxx.xxx:8172/MsDeploy.axd;UserName=UserName;Password=Password;UseMsdeployExe=True"
ContinueOnError="False"
/>
When the upgrade was initiated and my problem discovered we were using Web Deploy 2.0 but now we have upgraded to Web Deploy 3.0. I have also made sure we are building with ToolsVersion="4.0".
UPDATE --
msbuild.exe /p:AllowUntrustedCertificate=True
/p:AuthType=Basic
/p:Configuration=Dev
/p:CreatePackageOnPublish=True
/p:DeployIisAppPath=dev.myweb
/p:DeployOnBuild=True
/p:DeployTarget=MsDeployPublish
/p:MSDeployPublishMethod=WMSvc
/p:MsDeployServiceUrl=https://10.xxx.xxx.xxx:8172/MsDeploy.axd
/p:UserName=UserName
/p:Password=Password
/p:UseMsdeployExe=True
E:\Builds\1\WhatEver\Daily_Build\Sources\My.Web\My.Web.csproj
Now I also tried to run the above msbuild command from our TFS and no response which frustrates me completely. Nothing in the event log of TFS, nothing in log file no matter verbosity... Any ideas?
It does work using msdeploy directy like below;
<Exec Command=""C:\Program Files\IIS\Microsoft Web Deploy V3\MSDeploy.exe" -verb:sync -source:contentPath="E:\Builds\1\WhatEver\Daily_Build\Sources\My.Web\My.Web.csproj" -dest:contentPath="E:\dev.my.web",computername=https://10.xxx.xxx.xxx:8172/MsDeploy.axd,username=UserName,password=Password,authtype=Basic -allowUntrusted=True"
ContinueOnError="false" />
--
UPDATE 2 --
It appears Microsoft added a check for what type of projects that are publishable projects and our web application are not, since the Output Type is Class Library. This has been valid with v4.0 but apparently not for v4.5.
Anyone have an idea of what to do make it work again? Do I need to change the project type? Create publishing package up front and then deploy that? Or what?
--
Anyone else that has had the same problem? Have you found a solution to share?
Could there be an issue with version of MSBuild?
Here is what I would recommend. In VS2012 we have made it easy to automate publishing your web projects using the publish profiles which are created by the publish dialog. In your case create a new MSDeploy profile. When you create that profile we will save the settings into a file under Properties\PublishProfiles (or My Project\PublishProfiles for VB). The extension of this file will be .pubxml. Those files are actually MSBuild files, which you can customize if needed. You can continue to use the publish dialog as well. The password will be stored in a .user file and encrypted such that only you can decrypt it.
After you have created that profile you can publish with the command below if you are building the .sln file.
msbuild mysoln.sln /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:PublishProfile=<ProfileName> /p:Password=<Password>
If you are building the .csproj/.vbproj then you need to tweak this a bit in the following way
msbuild mysoln.sln /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:PublishProfile=<ProfileName> /p:Password=<Password> /p:VisualStudioVersion=11.0
More on why VisualStudioVersion is required at http://sedodream.com/2012/08/19/VisualStudioProjectCompatabilityAndVisualStudioVersion.aspx.
Once you do this you will be able to build+publish just like you did previously. FYI we have shipped all these new web publish features for VS2010 in the Azure SDK https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/#.
Also in your question I noticed that you are specifying some custom properties, like MvcBuildViews. You can now place those properties directly inside the publish profile (the .pubxml file) if you want. Of course you can still pass them in on the command line if that makes more sense for your scenario.
More info on this at http://sedodream.com/2012/06/15/VisualStudio2010WebPublishUpdates.aspx.
If you take a look at the approach that we had for developers to automate publishing it was to specify properties and targets to be executed during the build. The problem with this approach is that this limits our ability to enhance the web publish experience. In the new release we have introduced an abstraction, the publish profile, which allows us to change the underlying targets of the web publish pipeline and your automation scripts will continue to run. Hopefully from this point forward you will not have to re-visit this issue.
I had much the same problem today. I too was trying to get a .NET 4.5 web application automatically deployed using a machine that did not have Visual Studio 2012 installed on it. There were a couple of minor differences in my situation, however: I was using TeamCity instead of TFS, and our solution was created with .NET 4.5 as opposed to being one that had been upgraded from .NET 4.0.
Nonetheless, I did have the same problem described. I'd use MSBuild to build the web app and deploy it to IIS, in much the same way. This approach worked fine on my dev machine. However, when I ran MSBuild on the CI server, it quite happily built the web app, but it stopped after that: no errors, no warnings, nothing, just a message that the build was successful. There wasn't the slightest hint of an attempt at deploying the app to IIS.
It seems MSBuild was missing the relevant targets to perform the web deployment.
The fix was to copy the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\Web from my dev machine to the CI server, copying it to the same place on the CI server as it was on my machine.
Once I did that, MSBuild then grumbled about needing Web Deploy 3.0, but that was fixed easily enough. After installing that on the CI server too, MSBuild quite happily deployed the web app.
To extend Luke Woodward's answer:
I, too, found that deploying C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\Web\ from my local machine to the build server was the fix.
However, the real fix is to install the Microsoft Web Developer Tools as part of the VS 2012 installation, which will create this folder, among other things. This addresses Ieppie's licensing objection.
I tested this by...
Deleting C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\Web\
Running the VS 2012 installer and adding MS Web Dev tools.
Verifying that, after the install, C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\Web\ was back.
I'm trying to get my web application to deploy automatically at the end of an automated build and I'm obviously missing something.
My setup is:
VS2012 on a Win7 workstation
TFS2010 repository on serverA
TFS build agent on serverB
Test site in IIS7 on serverC.
I have created a quick test project using the default MVC4 template and created a Team Project to go with it using the MS VS Scrum 1.0 template.
I created a new publish profile for the web application using the publish web dialog and the .pubxml file is checked in with the project. The .pubxml file looks something like this:
<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<PropertyGroup>
<WebPublishMethod>MSDeploy</WebPublishMethod>
<SiteUrlToLaunchAfterPublish>TestServer/DeployTest</SiteUrlToLaunchAfterPublish>
<MSDeployServiceURL>http://TestServer</MSDeployServiceURL>
<DeployIisAppPath>webapp-dev/DeployTest</DeployIisAppPath>
<RemoteSitePhysicalPath />
<SkipExtraFilesOnServer>False</SkipExtraFilesOnServer>
<MSDeployPublishMethod>RemoteAgent</MSDeployPublishMethod>
<UserName>mydomain\myuser</UserName>
<_SavePWD>True</_SavePWD>
<PublishDatabaseSettings>
<Objects xmlns="" />
</PublishDatabaseSettings>
</PropertyGroup>
</Project>
*some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent :)
Using this profile I can successfully publish the application from Visual Studio to the test web server without any issue. Following Scott Hanselman's blog post I successfully published from the command line on my workstation:
msbuild DeployTest.csproj /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:PublishProfile=Test /p:AllowUntrustedCertificate=true /p:Password=notTheRealPassword
I then created a build in Team Explorer that would use my build server to compile and then run the unit tests. All good. The project builds, unit tests pass.
I then added the parameters from the command line to the MS Build Arguments in the Advanced section of the build definition:
/p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:PublishProfile=Test /p:AllowUntrustedCertificate=true /p:Password=notTheRealPassword
The build runs, the unit tests pass, nothing is published to the web server. :(
Can someone enlighten me as to what I have missed? Nothing I've read seems to indicate a step I have missed out but there's seemingly precious little documentation to explain how this is done.
It sounds like tfs might not support publish profiles.
You may need to pull out all the parameters from the profile and specify them manually.
Here's a similar question.
Team Build: Publish locally using MSDeploy
I know this is an old question but today I ran into the same issue and I think I know the reason for the behavior you observed. Let me summarize the issue:
You have create a web deploy publish profile.
When you use the profile from command prompt with MSBuild command, the site is published successfully.
But when you use this profile from the build definition (by specifying MS Build Arguments in the advanced section of the build definition) the site is not published.
I think the reason behind this is because you have VS 2012 on your workstation which supports publish using profile feature. Hence when you run the MS build from command prompt on your work-station the site is published. But the support for publish profile is not available on TFS 2010 hence with build server the site is not published.
I faced the same issue today and I did following to resolve the issue:
On TFS machine, from the command prompt, I ran the MS Build command with publish profile. The command ran successfully but nothing got published (copied) on the site. This proves that TFS 2010 server does not support public profiles.
I had VS 2010 deployed on the TFS machine. I installed web deploy 3.5 and Windows Azure SDK for Visual Studio 2010. This is the way to provide support for publish profile on VS 2010.
Then I ran the MS Build command using published profile from command prompt and it published the site successfully.
Then finally executed the build definition with MS Build parameters and the site got published successfully.
I know installing Visual studio on TFS machine not an ideal solution but at least it solved my problem.
I am also not sure why installing VS 2010 with publish profile support resolved the issue. But it seems that, after the installation some of the missing components/dlls got deployed on the TFS machine which resolved the issue.
Hope this resolves your deployment issue.
[UPDATE]: There could be another reason for the above behavior. Check the log messages of the build activity. If you find a warning similar to this:
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets (484, 9): warning: The OutputPath property is not set for project ProjectName.csproj'. Please check to make sure that you have specified a valid combination of Configuration and Platform for this project. Configuration='Release' Platform='Any CPU'
Then it may be related to build configuration. If you are using “Any CPU” as build configuration then change it to “AnyCPU” (remove space). Refer following link for the detailed explanation:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/0bb277ec-a08c-4795-88f0-3207654e2560/the-outputpath-property-is-not-set-for-project-xxxxxbtproj-please-check-to-make-sure-that-you?forum=tfsbuild
Amey
We current do manual builds/publish from Visual Studio 2010 and we require users to always be running the latest version (check before startup and minimum required version set). I am working on scripting our deployment out and have no issues using msbuild to build/publish. However, I have not found a way to auto-increment the minimum required version when msbuild runs. What are my options to automatically bump this when publishing via msbuild?
I did see quite a few articles on this topic here, but they seemed to be specific to VS and not MSBuild.
Updating the MinimumRequiredVersion Automatically
Introduction to Project Editor
In Solution Explorer, right click on your project and select unload project.
Once the project has become unavailable, right click again and select edit <project_name>.<lang> proj.
Introduction to MSBuild
Properties use key/value pairs to extract information
Using the property name as an alias, you can use $(OutputPath) to obtain the value for the element <OutputPath>.\bin</OutputPath>
We’ll use the following properties generated for a ClickOnce deployment
<MinimumRequiredVersion>1.0.0.6</MinimumRequiredVersion>
<ApplicationRevision>7</ApplicationRevision>
<ApplicationVersion>1.0.0.%2a</ApplicationVersion>
MSBuild Tasks can be specified in the project (*.proj) file and invoked during a build event.
FormatVersion is a built-in task for .NET 4.0 and later that formats the ApplicationVersion and ApplicationRevision into a single version number.
Implementation
Copy and Paste the following code into the opened project file as a child element to the root <Project> element.
<Target Name="AutoSetMinimumRequiredVersion" BeforeTargets="GenerateDeploymentManifest">
<FormatVersion Version="$(ApplicationVersion)" Revision="$(ApplicationRevision)">
<Output PropertyName="MinimumRequiredVersion" TaskParameter="OutputVersion" />
</FormatVersion>
<FormatVersion Version="$(ApplicationVersion)" Revision="$(ApplicationRevision)">
<Output PropertyName="_DeploymentBuiltMinimumRequiredVersion" TaskParameter="OutputVersion" />
</FormatVersion>
</Target>
This code will take ApplicationVersion and ApplicationRevision as parameters in the Format Version task and will save the output by overwriting the MinimumRequiredVersion with the full publish version.
Save and reload your project. Every ClickOnce deployment will now automatically update to the most recently published version.
Many thanks to Kev for their answer which I have basically rehashed here with a little bit of added clarification for any beginners. Here's a blog post I made about the issue that expands even more on my answer here.
Right now, I'm leaning towards updating the MinimumRequiredVersion via a custom command-line utility that will simply read in the project file and increment it. It's the only option I've come up with for scripting out my build.
I'm not sure if you're going about this the best possible way.
I would recommend using a continuous integration (CI) server like Team City that is responsible for deployments. If having the latest version of the source code is a requirement for publishing, then that is probably something you should build into a well-tested CI build configuration, and take away from the hands of the potentially forgetful/occasionally error-prone users.
Since you are wanting to publish using MSBuild and not Visual Studio, I assume you are publishing from a build server or using some sort of script. You can use the Set-ProjectFilesClickOnceVersion PowerShell script to both set the ClickOnce Application Version as well as force the Minimum Required Version to be the latest version. You would want to do this before running MSBuild. My blog describes in more detail how to setup your build server to accommodate publishing ClickOnce applications.