I have a workspace which has 2 projects, one is installer application and other is uninstaller app.
Both the apps requires privilege helper tool for some operations. I am trying to write a common tool as a third project in my workspace that would be linked with the existing projects.
Now, the question is how can i add that common tool in target dependency of existing projects and launch(privilege tool) it from other projects.
You can add the project that contains the helper tool within the other workspaces, and then add the target corresponding to the helper tool as build dependency, as you want.
If however you are using source control and have different repositories for projects, you can use the helper tool repository as a submodule to the other ones. See this article for more on git submodules and how you can use them.
Related
asp.net core 2.2 publish generating lots off DLL in output directory(bin\Release\netcoreapp2.2\publish).
How I can move it to some other folder (bin\Release\netcoreapp2.2\publish\lib) & reference it?
Your question doesn't really make sense, but I imagine you're looking for a way to include a library from one solution in another. This is not the way to do that.
Instead, package your project as a NuGet. Then, you can reference the NuGet package in your other solution's projects. Some people are confused and think creating NuGet packages means having to make them public on the main NuGet repository. While you can of course do that, it's not required. You have a private repo, either through a third-party or deploy your own, or you can simply use a filesystem path or network location as a "repo".
In any case, creating a NuGet package is simple. You simply edit your project properties, go to the "Package" tab, and enable NuGet package creation. Fill in the relevant details about your package on that screen, and you're off to the races. Whenever you build or publish your project, you'll get a NuGet package created in the same directory. Then, just push that to your NuGet repo, or if it's a filesystem path or network location, copy it there.
I have multiple projects in the same folder, each of them creates a microservice. Each has a separate build and release pipeline. Currently each project is configured so to trigger when code is committed in its own sub folder. I am currently in the process of adding some common code which is used in some of the projects. I would like for a microservice to build and deploy if it uses a library that is being changes.
What is the best way to achieve this?
Ideally, I imagine something like this:
Build task which triggers on root directory -> Use MsBuild to determine if a project needs to build, by checking its dependencies -> Build/Abort.
Is this possible?
If you want to share code in source form and you are using .NET Framework projects, the best (but not optimal) approach that I found is to have the projects in the same folder and put the shared code in a subfolder that you include in both projects. To put shared code in a folder outside the root folder of a project is even worse.
The best approach (IMO) is to share code in compiled (Dll) form (rather than in source form): you can create a DLL with the shared code, package it in a NuGet package, and publish the NuGet package in some internal NuGet repository (for example, you can use the Artifacts feature of Azure DevOps as NuGet repository for your organization). The projects that require the shared code do it through NuGet references. The advantages is that the shared code in Dll/NuGet form can be versioned (not all projects must be updated at the same time for incompatible changes), it can use its own CI pipeline with unit tests, it can use its CD pipeline to publish to the Artifacts repository, etc.
I switched from the former approach to the latter. Much cleaner IMO.
I currently have a custom XAML build workflow which performs a lot of validations based on code structure, folders, file content and even database configuration.
Currently we need to consider to migrate it to TFS 2017, and I'm trying to understand the possibilities, effort and pitfalls and this is where I could use your help.
I have logic built in C# and then I look at MSDN documentation the language seems to be Javascript, GitHub samples seem to be Typescript. Am I forced to use one of this languages? any preferred one or limitations that I should be aware of? Can for instance, I connect to a database directly? or it's better to have an API and just use REST calls?
Can I for instance, use .Net object which have already some wrapped logic?
I also noticed that on the manifest file I can declare inputs, but can I somehow use outputs? For example, I have a task that does validation and in the end I would have a task to send an e-mail with the result of that validation. Is this possible?
Thank you in advance.
You are right in concluding that XAML builds are deprecated. The new Task based system is much more flexible and now that we even have YAML support, you can move to Builds as Code.
The reason you're seeing Build Tasks in TypeScript (which is a superset of JavaScript) because of the cross platform nature of NodeJS. This allows your tasks to run on Windows, Linux and Mac. In the mean time we also got .NET Core support. You can also use PowerShell if that's more of your liking.
Regarding your 'can I connect to a database' question. Yes you can, if you want it is another question. This will massively slow your build down and will make your build fail if there are issues with database connectivity. I would suggest asking a second question here on Stackoverflow to describe your situation and discuss if there is a better alternative.
You can use output variables from your task and reuse these in the next tasks. That's all supported and no problem (see https://roadtoalm.com/2016/08/11/set-output-variable-in-a-powershell-vsts-build-task/ for an example).
There are too many questions here and they are broad.
Whatever, XAML Build are deprecated in TFS 2017 and will not be available in the next version of TFS. VSTS already no longer supports them. So you need to Migrate from XAML builds to new builds (vNext builds). Also this similar thread for your reference : Converting TFS XAML Build Custom Activities into TFS 2015 Build Tasks
Marketplace
While you can make use of custom build tasks with XAML build there is
no centralized or integrated solution for browsing available tasks,
installing them or managing them. With the new builds you can make use
of the quickly-growing Visual Studio Team Services Marketplace. Here,
you can search and browse the many extensions currently available in
the Marketplace.
See WHY SHOULD I LEAVE XAML BUILDS for details.
So, you can find the existing extensions in Marketplace and install them to extend the build process (add correspinding tasks). You can also custom your own extension based on your specific requirements. See Extensions overview.
You can build custom applications or services that integrate with your
Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and Team Foundation Server (TFS)
accounts by using the REST APIs to make direct HTTP calls, or
utilize our .NET Client Libraries.
Source here : Integrating with VSTS and Team Foundation Server
To add a custom task you can reference below articles:
Add a build task
Reference for creating custom build tasks within extensions
Developing a Custom Build vNext Task
For the "outputs" validation, you can try it with build alerts.
I have a shared resources project that I'd like to reference as part of my Team Services build, is there an existing task that can obtain these assemblies so that they are available to the MSBuild task?
I know I can have a libraries folder within a project to hold these references but I'd rather build from a central source and not have the noise of these additional folders in my projects.
Don't put binary references in source control. Turn your binary references into NuGet packages and allow your build process to restore the appropriate version of your NuGet package as necessary.
There is a VS Team Services extension for Package Management that will likely help you accomplish this. You can publish the outputs of your shared project as a private NuGet feed and then consume the feed in your other projects.
These references may also help:
Conceptual - https://www.visualstudio.com/sl-si/docs/package/what-is-packaging
Overview - https://www.visualstudio.com/sl-si/docs/package/overview
Our main website is a collection of 10 separate ASP.NET projects and applications. At the moment, to do a complete deployment onto a fresh server involves running ten separate msdeploy jobs; each application is built, configured (using config transforms) and packaged, but we don't have any solution for deploying all the packages as a single operation.
I can see several possibilities that might work in this scenario, but would love to hear from anybody who has succeeded - or failed - in setting up something similar:
A folder full of packages and deploy.cmd scripts, with a "master script" that will call each individual app script in turn and deploy that app to the target server.
Using a staging server where we deploy the latest build of each package from TeamCity using the production configuration, but then use msdeploy to capture that server into a single enormous msdeploy ZIP package, which is then deployed onto each production server as a single msdeploy step.
Creating a single, enormous Visual Studio solution that references EVERY project in our codebase (perhaps via svn:externals?), compiles and cross-references them ALL, and hence supports using a single msbuild job to create a huge monolithic package containing our entire codebase, built from the latest revision in source control and configured for the target environment.
I've studied Troy Hunt's excellent "You're Deploying it Wrong" series, and Scott Hanselman's "Web Deployment Made Awesome" article, but I think I'm looking for something a step beyond either of these approaches that incorporates multiple projects and applications without necessarily building them from source in a single step - any ideas?
We had a very similar scenario in our company, and we created an installation package using WIX. Our config transform happens at installation time, so now we create a single build, then deploy that to each server via an MSI install package. WIX is very flexible, but also has a steep learning curve. We modify our configs using our own custom action, but it could be done other ways.
We use Team Foundation Server and MSBuild to do our builds. This is pretty straight forward, but did take some work to set up correctly with as many projects and solutions as we had.
Other options we looked into, and even tried were:
InstallShield - Not flexible enough.
Writing our own C# Install - WIX already thought of everything we
were trying to accomplish so why reinvent the wheel?
Just saying to heck with it all and installing things manually - 2 or
3 months of development time in WIX and MSBuild have easily paid for
the hours we would have spent of the last year doing things manually.
I think the deployment tools built into Visual Studio were designed for a single application with just a few deployments. It sounds like you need external tools, and development effort, to get your deployments quicker, and eliminate the need for doing things manually. That's why we invested in the above solution, and it has really paid off.
I'll pick Installshield.
Installshield latest versions support creating webdeploy packages.
You can define the IIS configurations for all apps in a single project and create releases if you want to create packages by separate or one single release for all web apps.
Installshield project has an object model where you can automate basically every task from build scripts, also the projects are simple xml files that you can also modify in automation scripts if required
Developers can modify update WixXML projects by separate and you can add those projects builds as merge modules to your installshield projects through your build scripts with some little tweaks to the installshield project xml (at least in 2011 version, this part is not supported by installshield but can be done)
You don't even need to modify Visual Studio Projects for groups of web apps that follow a same pattern, neither manually modify your installshield project to add new web apps for these cases, you can create packages for new web apps without intervention setting one time your build scripts for the installshield project automation task based on the root VS build output