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
Related
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.
We're trying to work through the new tool chain for building and deploying an ASP.NET 5 (vNext) CoreCLR web site to a server cluster. Between the new compilation changes and the changes to TFS, I'm not sure how everything now gets built and deployed. The scenario is as follows:
On-premise TFS for source control and build agent
Targeting ASP.NET 5 under CoreCLR, hosted via IIS
Questions are:
Using TFS for continuous integration builds (and hopefully deployment to an on-premise IIS server), how does one build and deploy this new application type?
It seems like MSBuild might still be usable to point at a .sln file so as to indirectly invoke dnu.exe, is that correct? Is that the appropriate way to do that now?
Should we be running a scripted build task instead to run dnu.exe instead?
How are these new CoreCLR builds deployed? Just a straight copy to a directory on a remote machine?
This is a new application and we're using a multi-layered application architecture, where the DAL and Business logic are in their own CoreCLR projects, if that makes a difference.
Thanks in advance for shedding some light on the situation.
Here is what we ended up doing:
Powershell script "prebuild.ps1" as per the previous answer and Microsoft deployment guidelines: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/Library/vs/alm/Build/azure/deploy-aspnet5
Vanilla MSBuild build. no switches or special settings.
Powershell script to execute xUnit test runner. We used guidance from this post at http://fluentbytes.com/running-xunit-test-with-asp-net-dnx-and-tfs-2015-build/
Powershell script to run "dnu publish". This creates a directory of the entire web application's structure.
"Windows File Copy" task to deploy the directory structure created in #4 to all of the target machines in the test environment.
To build and deploy ASP.NET 5 via TFS2015 vNext build system, you need to:
1). Create a PowerShell script (named Prebuild.ps1, for example) to install DNX. Details of the PowerShell script can be found: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/Library/vs/alm/Build/azure/deploy-aspnet5 . Add the script file into TFS version control.
2). Add the PowerShell script build step into build definition. Run the Prebuild.ps1 script in this step:
3). In the MSBuild step, specify the project needs to be built, and add the following /p:DeployOnBuild=True /p:DeployTarget=MSDeployPublish /p:CreatePackageOnPublish=True /p:MSDeployPublishMethod=InProc /p:MsDeployServiceUrl=localhost /p:DeployIisAppPath="Default Web Site/TFSTest1" /p:VisualStudioVersion=14.0 to publish the project to IIS.
Visual Studio Online and gated checkin, ASP.NET vNext project.
I have a solution with asp.net vnext project (*.kproj extension)
Enable gated checkin on Visual Studio Online and enable unit tests for each checkin.
After checkin in logs error:
C:\a\src\Dev\project\MyProj\MyProj.kproj (7): The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v11.0\AspNet\Microsoft.Web.AspNet.Props" was not found. Confirm that the path in the declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.
How to solve this error and what is this "Microsoft.Web.AspNet.Props"? In solution and projects I don't see refereces or something else with name "Microsoft.Web.AspNet.Props"?
Why used v11.0 version? I think should be used v14.0.
The build servers provided by Microsoft as part of the hosted build service are production servers and don't run pre-release software.
If you want to have a build server with Visual Studio 2015 (v14) then you will need to create one yourself. You can easily use your MSDN allowance to create and run a build server on Azure.
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 have been trying to achieve ClickOnce deployment using MSBuild scripts, but I could not find any resource on how to copy the files after generating the manifests.
Since we need to script baby steps in case of mannual deployment, which Visual Studio does for us if we use the wizard, I'm not able to do it, since I'm new to both MSBuild and ClickOnce.
Is there a resource where I can find detailed information on how to script the entire ClickOnce deployment for multiple environments, increment version number using TeamCity's BUILD_NUMBER and sign the assemblies?
All that you see Visual Studio doing is done by MSBuild (except creating/updating the "publish.html"). This is true for any environment, if you meant configuration. To publish using MSBuild, all I do is execute the following at Command Line:
%SystemRoot%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v3.5\msbuild <myProjectName> /p:Configuration=Debug; /t:publish
This gives me a Development environment Build (we use the default Debug configuration for Dev). For QA I just replace the "Debug" part in the above command to "Release".