Erratic file naming of *.dacpac files when building a *.sqlproj SSDT project on a TeamCity 7 build server - msbuild

We have an MSBuild task that builds our *.sqlproj file, the output of which is loaded back into TeamCity as an artifact for subsequent deployment.
Similar to this user, we are having some unpredictable output file naming happen:
Invalid file names when trying to deploy SSDT project with TeamCity 8
It appears that sometimes, it produces this output file under /bin/Release:
MyProj.sqlproj.dacpac
Then subsequent builds produce this file in the same folder:
MyProj.dacpac
We haven't done indepth testing yet - I was wondering if anyone else has seen similar or has a suggested troubleshooting path?
To be clear, it's the same task, running the same command against the same project - just run repeatedly overtime as new checkins happen.

Sounds like you have conflicting .sqlproj files being checked in.
I'd start by checking the history.

Well, after looking more closely at the build log I could see that the TeamCity MSBuild runner appears to be creating some temporary virtual project files (or something, I don't know for sure because they get deleted) with names like:
MyProj.sqlproj.teamcity
I theorized that this may be confusing MSBuild or one of the targets related to building dacpacs, so I replaced the TeamCity MSBuild build step with a Command Line build step that calls MSBuild on the original project file itself, and this appeared to solve the problem. It now produces the dacpac with the file I'm expecting.
I don't have time to dig further now, but I could believe that there's some logic in the chain somewhere that is deriving the name for the final *.dacpac from the name of the project file being used. My guess is that it just strips off everything after the last "." and attaches the ".dacpac" suffix.
I don't fully know why it would occasionally create a *.dacpac file with the correct name, but I was at times doing a manual build in the TeamCity agent work folder from the commandline on the build server itself, so this may have just been a file leftover from previous executions.

Related

MSBuild not placing files where requested

So coming across a very strange issue with MSbuild using TFS 2015 build definition.
The web application I am trying to build has multiple csprojs that are used as class libraries throughout the application and of course my actual web application.
Bellow are the MSBuild arguments I am passing through currently to get a fully completed build.
/p:UseWPP_CopyWebApplication=True
/p:PipelineDependsOnBuild=False /p:OutDir=C:\Agent\_work\1\s\Application\Package\bin\
/p:WebProjectOutputDir=C:\Agent\_work\1\s\Application\Package\WebSite\
/p:NoWarn=0067
/v:Minimal
What I would actually like to do is the following.
/p:UseWPP_CopyWebApplication=True
/p:PipelineDependsOnBuild=False /p:OutDir=C:\Agent\_work\1\s\Application\Package\Website\bin\
/p:WebProjectOutputDir=C:\Agent\_work\1\s\Application\Package\WebSite\
/p:NoWarn=0067
/v:Minimal
The issue I run in to is after the first assemblies are run and placed in the bin folder it then works on the main webproject csproj and throws a unable to locate file for copy message.
I don't understand why this would be the case? Is it because MSBuild is expecting the bin folder to be empty/not there?
Am I missing something in the build order or different Argument needs to be passed. I have also to tried 'outpath' as well.
In the second arguments, the "OutDir" path is the same with "WebProjectOutputDir". This cause the issue since MSBuild will clean the "WebProjectOutputDir" folder before run "_WPPCopyWebApplication" task which copies files to "WebProjectOutputDir" folder. That means the files generated in "OutDir" during the build will be cleaned because it use the same path with "WebProjectOutputDir", so the task will cannot locate the files to copy.
To avoid this issue, you'd either change the "OutDir" different with "WebProjectOutputDir" or add one more arguments:
/p:CleanWebProjectOutputDir=False

MSBuild - Can I build for a Build Configuration without a solution?

I want to build a project with a particular named Build Configuration, let's call it Conf-A.
This is running as an MSBuild step on TeamCity. When the build runs, it spits out:
The OutputPath property is not set for project ... You may be seeing this message because you are trying to build a project without a solution file, and have specified a non-default Configuration or Platform that doesn't exist for this project.
This project is part of a hulking great solution we load on our dev machines.
The error makes sense for my situation, since I'm building just the proj file, but I don't want to use the solution file since I'm trying break-up this monolithic app.
I want the build-server to treat this project as it's own component, even if for the moment it is part of a solution and has references to other projects (assemblies) in the solution.
Must I build this via a solution file?
I could potentially copy the solution file and prune off all the other projects that are not required, but that's more complexity.
(Maybe the error is a red-herring).
you dont need to build a sln. Its like the error says. You just havent specified a value for the variable OutputPath in your msbuild. You can add it to your files or you can pass it in at the cmd line - msbuild someproj.proj /p:OutputPath=C:\notallovermydrive

What parameters does TeamCity pass to MSBuild under the covers?

I just downloaded TeamCity 7 today and decided to get it up and running for my Azure solution. I am not trying to do anything fancy (yet) and started with a very basic command line build:
msbuild /t:Publish /p:Configuration=Release;TargetProfile=Production;PublishDir=S:\HoursTracker\Deployments
This builds successfully and produces a package that looks like this*:
I then attempted to configure TeamCity in an identical fashion:
This builds successfully and produces a package that looks like this*:
What I don't understand is why there is such a huge discrepancy in the size of the MVC project. Publishing directly from Visual Studio produces the exact same result as my MSBuild command so I'm convinced that TeamCity is the odd man out. Since I assume TeamCity is not broken, can someone please educate me on how to properly configure it so that I get the expected output?
*I have renamed the package files with .zip so that the details were viewable for this post.
Ming's answer helped me solve the mystery. After inspecting the contents of the zip files, I discovered the difference was that my MSBuild package contained bin and obj folders and the TeamCity package did not.
After making this discovery, I realized that I could specify multiple targets to MSBuild and prepended "Clean" to my targets switch like so:
msbuild /t:Clean;Publish /p:Configuration=Release;TargetProfile=Production;PublishDir=S:\HoursTracker\Deployments
As expected, this removed those folders. So apparently, TeamCity specifies "Clean" implicitly for you. Mystery solved.
Windows Azure packages may be larger than we expect. You can rename the cssx file to zip and you will find out what’s inside the package. In addition to the web application’s usual files, there’re a bunch of Windows Azure files. For example, if you enable diagnostics, you will see a diagnostics folder, where you’ll find files used by Windows Azure diagnostics runtime.
Best Regards,
Ming Xu.
Why you specified x64 for msbuild runner? Try selecting tools version as well. You have not specified /p:Platform parameter. Does publish task involve rebuild?
TeamCity starts msbuild with number of /p: parameters taken from " properties and environment variables " section, plus some well-known parameters like configuration name or project name.

I would like to have my AssemblyVersion in my deployment package name

I am using MSbuild to create a deployment package (simply copying various files from the projects in my solution to different folders) I would like the root folder to be of the format
DeploymentPackage2.3.4.5ForRelease
How can I get MSbuild to put the Assembly number in the folder name automatically?
EDIT:
The solution has a great deal of projects in it (too many really) they all get their version number from a SharedAssemblyInfo.cs file that is manually updated but in the fullness of time will pick up the svn build number (but that is a job for later)
I am building using an external .bat file that calls a custom written .targets/.proj setup that simply calls msbuild on the .sln of the solution.
The 'create package' step I am trying to create happens after a succesful build and will eventually be run by our CI framework, however I would like to be able to run it locally too.
I have created a "CreatePackage" target that does the copying that I want, however it is currently into a fixed folder. I need the folder name to reflect the AssemblyVersion of one of the final dll's.
If there is a better way then I want to know about it... but I am going to use this I think
MSBuild Task to read version of dll

MSBuild overwriting dependencies

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.